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The Chief Justice Alfonse Owiny-Dollo is in Doha, Qatar, to participate in the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) summit.

Owiny-Dollo is attending the 5th Standing International Forum for Commercial Courts meeting together with the former Chief Justice Bart Magunda Katureebe.

Katureebe handed over office to Owiny-Dollo in 2020 after retiring from judicial service on reaching 70 years.

“I am attending the 5th Standing International Forum for Commercial Courts meeting in Doha, Qatar where I presented the Ugandan experience on ADR in resolution of disputes, and to highlight to the world, the resolutions of the Africa Chief Justices ADR Summit held recently in Kampala,” Owiny-Dollo stated on X (formerly Twitter) Sunday, April 21, 2024.

The two-day meeting has attracted delegations from over 50 jurisdictions.

The subjects for roundtable judicial discussion will include the relationship between Courts, arbitration and mediation, case management, corporate legal responsibility, commercial litigation and arbitration funding, and transnational judicial cooperation.

Recently, Owiny-Dollo implored judicial officers to embrace ADR mechanisms such as mediation, arbitration, conciliation, and negotiation in resolving disputes, saying it enhances access to justice.

Court mediation is a private process where a neutral third person helps the parties involved in discussing and trying to resolve the dispute. Whereas there can be mediation, the process can remain voluntary in that the parties are not required to come to an agreement.

Owiny-Dollo said Uganda's Judiciary may not address the ever-growing system of case backlog by only using the courts of Law.

He emphasised the need to expand the use of ADR, which he says will help to rejuvenate the traditional systems of dispute resolution.

In spite of these processes, a justice needs report in 2016 revealed that courts and lawyers are marginal to the experience of the day-to-day justice needs of the people of Uganda.

The report revealed that less than 5% of the dispute resolution takes place in court of law and in less than 1% of all the cases, a lawyer is involved.

The report further revealed that most Ugandan citizens rely on informal justice processes. At the time, the report recommended the adoption of ADR mechanisms as a means of resolving disputes in a fair manner.

In a justice needs and satisfaction report of 2020, legal problems per year in Uganda was put at 12.8 million and, while many are resolved, majority are unresolved, or the resolution is seen as unfair.

The statistics are to the effect that every year, 4.7 million legal problems are abandoned without fair resolution, 1.9 million are ongoing, and 2.13 million are considered to be unfairly resolved.