Rafael Lobo Niembro

Rafael Lobo Niembro is a lawyer, mediator, facilitator, trainer and consultant in conflict management in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico. He is Founding Partner of Alinea, the first Private Mediation Center certified by the State Supreme Court in Nuevo Leon, Mexico.

He was the founder and Director of the first Municipal Mediation Center in Mexico in 1999 at San Pedro Garza García, Nuevo Leon. He has developed several projects on mediation for municipalities in the metropolitan area of Monterrey as well as with the State Supreme Court and the Attorney General Office of Nuevo Leon.

He has been a consultant and developer of peace culture projects with the Mexican Federal Government for social conflicts in different environments, complexities and participants.

He has been invited as a speaker in seminars, regional, national and international mediation congresses in countries such as Italy, Spain, Argentina, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Ecuador, Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Jamaica and The United States.  He has been lecturing on mediation for different public and private organizations as well as Universities around the country.

He participated as a pro bono consultant in the legislative package that was approved in the State Congress of Nuevo Leon in 2005 as well as consultant on the labor legal reforms creating the first national standard to certify labor conciliators in Mexico. Also, he has being a consultant for the Senate to create a national law on ADR for Mexico.

He was a consultant for the American Bar Association-USAID Mediation Project in Mexico for 18 States. He also is a member of the panel of international mediators for the International Centre for Dispute Resolution (ICDR), the international division of the American Arbitration Association (AAA).

He is certified mediator number 1 by the State Supreme Courts on Nuevo León and three other States in Mexico. (Coahuila, Tamaulipas and Yucatan)

He is the founder and first President of the Mediators State Bar of Nuevo Leon, which was the first State Bar in Mexico, also, he is founder and Ex-President of ARCO, Association for Conflict Resolution, the first national mediation association in Mexico. He collaborated with the IMI, International Mediation Institute in the Hague as member of the Independent Standards Commission to establish criteria, standards and material for IMI Certification where he became the first Mexican to be certified by the IMI https://imimediation.org/member/rafael-lobo/ . In addition, he has been designated as the mediator for the World Bank for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean for internal matters, since 2011. In 2022 he became part of the international global panel of mediators for five different agencies of the United Nations that provide mediation services for labor cases.

Mr. Lobo has been awarded with the “Peace and Concord” medal as an acknowledgment for his contribution to promote mediation in Mexico, during the XI National Congress and VII World Congress of Mediation in Toluca, State of Mexico in August 2011, among other recognitions as a pioneer and leader in the field of mediation.

Currently, he is a professor on ADR at Universidad de Monterrey and the Director of the Dispute Resolution Center for the Law Faculty.