Islamabad, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister for Human Rights and Women Empowerment, Mushaal Hussein Mullick, emphasized the growing importance of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) in Pakistan for alleviating the pressure on the country’s overburdened judiciary. She highlighted this during a workshop organized by the Legal Aid and Justice Authority (LAJA), Ministry of Human Rights, focusing on training ADR practitioners.
According to Press Information Department, the workshop aimed at capacity building and imparting training in ADR methods like mediation, arbitration, and negotiation. It featured a distinguished panel including Senior Judge Federal Sharia Court Justice Syed Muhammad Anwar, DG National Police Bureau Ehsan Sadiq, DG LAJA Dr. Rahim Awan, DG HR Ministry of Human Rights Abdul Sattar, and Executive Director PCHR Choudhary Shafique, and was attended by a significant number of aspiring ADR practitioners.
Mushaal Hussein Mullick, in her address, stated that the government, legal community, and various institutions have been taking initiatives to promote ADR and integrate it into the legal framework. She cited efficiency, cost-effectiveness, confidentiality, and flexibility as key advantages of ADR. The Special Assistant to the Prime Minister underscored ADR’s transformative potential in complementing traditional courts and mitigating the backlog of cases, pointing out the daunting statistic of 750 cases per judge in Pakistan.
She also mentioned that one of LAJA’s key functions is to provide legal aid to poor and vulnerable groups, particularly women and children, and to enhance public awareness of legal aid and laws in Pakistan. Mullick stressed that institutionalizing ADR would be especially beneficial in empowering women, girls, and marginalized communities due to its quick dispensation of justice.
Acknowledging the efforts of the Legal Aid and Justice Authority, formed under the LAJA Act 2020, to institutionalize ADR and establish reconciliatory committees across Pakistan, Mullick noted that these efforts would help prepare a pool of Master Trainers in ADR through capacity building and training sessions on modern ADR techniques. This would enable ADR practitioners to effectively utilize dispute resolution mechanisms.
Mushaal Hussein Mullick emphasized that training ADR practitioners should be a key priority and that the workshop was an important platform to explore the challenges, opportunities, and developments in alternative dispute resolution in Pakistan.