In the absence of adequate judicial manpower to adjudicate, cases are piling up in the courts. This is adding to the usual delays made in completing the prosecution of a lawsuit, thanks to the complexities of court case proceedings. The delivery of justice is as a result being delayed, to the dismay of the seekers of justice. A way out of this impasse is to give out-of-court settlement of cases a wider scope than it is now in practice. Given the situation, where, according to a study, the lower courts have only 5.5 judges to serve a million people, the importance of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) as an option cannot be overemphasised. Through a virtual event in the city recently, stakeholders including government functionaries concerned, advocates of ADR, its practitioners and experts once again articulated the growing importance of ADR in present-day Bangladesh.
In fact, resolution of disputes in an out-of-court setting through mediation is often advised by a court to help litigants avoid unnecessary hassles, save costs and get around delays. Also, when the country's courts are burdened with the challenge of disposing of 3.8 million cases with each judge to look after 2, 000 pending cases, it is no wonder that the case for ADR, of necessity, is gaining ground. On this score, Article 27 of the nation's constitution provides that 'all citizens are equal before law and are entitled to equal protection of law'. But the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of the people cannot simply afford to go to law and draw its benefits. And of them, women constitute the bulk as they are the deprived for understandable reasons in a male-dominated society. Therefore, in most cases, the formal court system is mostly beyond their reach. Worse still, they are even afraid of the ordeal their kind has often to go through in the process of trial.
On the other hand, unlike in an open courtroom, in the mediation sessions to settle disputes, the atmosphere is confidential where women feel rather comfortable to discuss personal and family matters. So, in the present context, mediation, as an ADR tool, can also provide the less privileged women with a window to seek redress. Historically, rural Bangladesh is no stranger to mediation as a way of settling disputes. In local terminology called 'salish', run by village elders, it has been in practice over the millennia to settle locally arising disputes mostly in the countryside. So, various out-of-court arrangements such as mediation, arbitration and other alternative means of dispute resolution can serve the less privileged ones of society better. Especially, women can immensely benefit from such arrangements.
That apart, ADR can also serve as an effective option to resolve commercial disputes in particular. In this connection, experts are of the view that the Arbitration Act 2001 has some limitations. And if the purpose of the law is to save time and money in arbitration proceedings, its present inadequacies have to be addressed. So, in their view, establishment of a separate authority to deal with arbitral issues would be a significant step forward. As part of meeting the UN's SDGs, the government is pledge-bound to 'ensure access to justice for all' by 2030. In that case, to expedite the process of justice, the government would do well to take the matter a stage further and give an institutional shape to ADR. In this way it would serve the cause better.
