Use Mediation to Resolve Cases – Emile Short Tells Judges

Former Commissioner for the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Justice Emile Short, has urged judges to result in the use mediation in resolving cases before them.

For him, the use of this method in court will help in fast truck cases before judges.

Justice Short revealed that the used of mediation in some courts have reduced the number of pending cases to 50%.

According to him, offices dedicated for the use by mediator at the new court complex have been lying idle due to lack of professional mediators to handle cases.

Speaking at the 2018 GIMPA Law Conference in Accra on Thursday, 15 February 2018, the former High Court Judge said there is the need to train more judges in the area of mediation.

“The judicial service should start giving training to its members in the areas of mediation and Alternative Dispute Resolutions (ADR) so as to reduce the number of cases before them”, he said.

He recommended better remuneration and condition of service for mediators adding that “some of the mediators at district courts have stopped due to bad condition of service”.

On her part, the Chief Justice Sophia Akufo has also revealed that the judiciary will roll out online filing of court cases next month to improve justice delivery and eliminate human face interactions that hitherto thwarted the efforts of the Judiciary.

She highlighted the importance of “dynamism in the pursuit for justice” and the need to be “innovative”.

For her, steps must be taken to ensure productivity in the judiciary and “part of doing that is ensuring that we effectively eliminate the amount of face-to-face interventions other than inside the court. So mechanisms have already been put in place and are being extended to ensure that as much as possible dealings between litigants and officials of the courts particularly at the registry and at the clerical level is limited to only what is necessary.

Story: Iddrissu A. Jara