Merging Ethiopian Wise-Counsel Mediation and Facilitative ...

III.3.2 Case Study: The Orange 23To illustrate how to identify positions, needs and interests and satisfy all conflict parties with a win-win solution.20 minutes.Flipcharts, markers.Step 1: Present the story of“"The Orange"”to the participants:On a nice day, a father gives one beautiful orange to his two children, Blen and Abdi (whom we can simplypresent as B and A). Both children grab the orange and shout, "Give me the orange—it's mine!"”A quarrel arisesand the father wonders how this conflict could be resolved. He comes up with different ideas.Step 2: Ask the participants to brainstorm how to resolve the conflict. What would be a win-win solution?Collect their ideas on a flipchart. Their suggestions might be:“ Just cut the orange into half.Each of the children will get one half of the orange.The older child will have the orange.The one who said first that the orange belongs to him/her will get the orange.Neither of them will get the orange.Step 3: Analyse which kind of solutions the group found: Are these lose-lose, win-lose, or maybe alreadywin-win solutions? The participants will not likely come up with win-win solutions in the first place.Let's examine the first example: Just cut the orange into half. Each of the children will get one half of the orange.This is the classic situation of a compromise. A compromise can be understood as a win-win or a lose-losesituation. It is lose-lose, because although each child gets half of the orange, he/she also loses half of theorange. Hence compromises are based on win-lose thinking because the bigger the part one party gets, thesmaller the part the other party gets.“ The older child will have the orange.”(win-lose)The one who said first that the orange belongs to him/her will get the orange.”(win-lose)Neither of them will get the orange.”(lose-lose)23 The example of "The Orange" refers to Fisher, R. & Ury, W. (1981) and is often used as an example in peace-building trainings.Mediation Training Toolbox33