Goals and Services

The central goals of MiKK e.V. are:

- Advising affected parents and professional groups active in this field (judges, attorneys, social workers).

- Expansion of the network of mediators who have specialized in bi-national mediations and who can collaborate as a mediator pair to reflect both cultures, both languages and both genders of the parents involved.

- Support of exchange among mediators from various countries in regard to mediation practice, mediation standards and personal experience.

- Support of cooperation and exchange among all parties involved in the process (courts, attorneys, central agencies, ministries of justice, international social services and local youth welfare agencies)

- Deepening of personal and professional exchange in the four bi-national projects that already exist as well as the development and establishment of new bi-national projects.

- Development of standards for mediations in international disputes involving parents and children (see the Wroclaw Declaration of October 2007).

In 2002, the project “Mediation in International Disputes Involving Parents and Children” was developed and established for mediations to settle international conflicts involving parents and children in connection both with proceedings based on the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction and the Brussels II bis Regulation, as well as with agreements about custody and visitation for bi-national parents and children. The foundation for the practice of mediation is contained in the Wroclaw Declaration on Mediation of Bi-National Disputes over Parents’ and Children’s Issues of 8 October 2007 (FamRZ 2008, 753). In July 2008, the German mediation associations BAFM (Federal Working Group on Family Mediation) and BM (Federal Association for Mediation) founded MiKK e.V. to continue and further the efforts of recent years within a new framework. This new organization is also meant to contribute to the sustainable regulation of international disputes involving parents and children and to the well-being of affected families and children.