History of Mediation in the world

The history of mediation goes back to Ancient Greece, where village elders used to mediate local disputes between the villagers. The activity of mediation appeared in very ancient times. The practice developed in Ancient Greece (which knew the non-marital mediator as a proxenetas), then in Roman civilization. (Roman law, starting from Justinian's Digest of 530–533 CE) recognized mediation. The Romans called mediators by a variety of names, including internuncius, medium, intercessor, philantropus, interpolator, conciliator, interlocutor, interpres, and finally mediator.^{[citation needed]}

Now mediation is a form a professional service, and mediators are professionally trained for mediation.

In the UK mediation has seen a rise as a service since the Children and Families Act 2014 made it compulsory for separating couples to go through a Mediation Information and Assessment Meeting (MIAM) before hearing in the Court.

There are some important statistics provided regarding the growth of the UK commercial mediation market increased by 20% from 2016 to 2018; this refers to commercial mediations rather than those relating to small claims. There was also increased scheme-related activity, this included activity from NHS Resolution and the Court of Appeal, which meant scheme related activity made up to be 37.5% of all mediation activities (HSFNotes, 2018).

The statistics in 2018 also refer to increased success rates in mediation with 74% achieving settlement on the day of the mediation session, reflecting the speedy nature of mediation once again.^[2]