PART I of the courts, avoids publicity or blame and yet reaches settlement. It can provide satisfaction for the victim and also has the advantage of making the wrongdoer understand the unfair nature of the challenged action, thus preventing repetition of the act. Mediation can often bring an easy remedy for the violation of the human dignity of the victims. Sometimes apologies or recognition of fault is what victims seek, and the ombudsman will be able to persuade the ‘respondent’ to provide this. The emphasis of the ombudsman’s procedure will be more on compensating and making whole the victim, defining the problem and preventing its future occurrence, than on blaming the wrongdoer. However, it should be taken into consideration that mediation is not a solution for all cases of violation of minority rights. Sometimes more adversarial methods can be appropriate. Reservations concerning mediation can be raised in relation to the message the mediation method conveys towards the public. Conciliation “treats racism as an individual, personal act and overlooks the institutional racism which impacts profoundly on the society” (MacEwan, 1997:21). Indeed, bringing minority cases down to a confidential person-to-person conciliation process conveys no message to society, it lacks the preventive educative role that investigations which are made public, or public court procedures, may have, and instead it attempts to solve the problem locally and silently. Its advantage is the satisfaction of the individual complainant and the constructive solution of the local issue. This criticism can best be avoided by splitting the focus of the institution between individual conciliation and other methods of enforcement. 20