Justices get training in mediation

High Court and Court of Appeal justices are undergoing a two day training in the use of mediation as one of the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) strategies in court.

The training, according to Justice Geoffrey Kiryabwire, is aimed at equipping the justices with knowledge and enhance their skills on the application of the mechanism in the Court of Appeal.

Mediation is a form of ADR used in resolution of court disputes between two or more parties without one going through a full trial.

Currently mediation is being employed in the magistrates and high court to resolve civil and commercial cases before they go into a full trial.

Some of the judges at the training in Kampala

Normally, a court mediator sits with both parties and they agree on how to resolve an issue but if the parties fail to agree, the mediator refers the case to be allocated to a judge to handle a full trial.

Kiryabwire who has been lobbying for the mechanism to be rolled out to the court of appeal said that this could be used to resolve the problem of case backlog in the registry.

"The mechanism is becoming more successful in the high courts and we too at the court of appeal have a backlog and feel that if it is applied, it will go a long way to resolve cases quickly instead of wasting five years waiting for a decision," Kiryabwire said.

He said that currently the court is piloting with a few cases and if they emerge successful, they will use it in all the civil cases before going through the main trial.

The training was sponsored by Pepperdine University and conducted by Professor of law Jim Gash and Peter Sherwood from San Francisco.