Justice beyond courtrooms

Pakistan's legal system has long struggled under the weight of delay. Courtrooms across the country remain burdened with millions of pending cases, stretching from civil disputes and land conflicts to commercial disagreements and family matters. For ordinary litigants, justice is often measured not in months, but in years - sometimes decades. In such a system, the growing push towards mediation and alternative dispute resolution (ADR) deserves serious attention, not as a fashionable reform, but as a practical necessity.

The establishment of a court-annexed mediation centre at the Supreme Court reflects an important recognition that conventional litigation alone cannot sustain the demands being placed on Pakistan's courts. The effort to train judges, court officials and legal professionals as mediators, while also offering free mediation services for those unable to afford them, is a welcome attempt to address the widening gap between legal rights and timely justice. The attraction of mediation is that it is quicker and less adversarial, often significantly cheaper than prolonged litigation. Countries across the world have increasingly adopted ADR mechanisms to reduce judicial burdens. Pakistan's own judiciary appears to be drawing lessons from these international models, particularly from Turkiye, where mediation reportedly resolved millions of disputes within a decade.

Yet, it must be understood that mediation is not a cure-all. Pakistan's justice system already suffers from procedural abuse and endless technical delays. If mediation merely becomes another mandatory step before litigation, it risks evolving into yet another layer of bureaucracy rather than a solution. A poorly supervised ADR framework could allow influential parties to pressure weaker litigants into settlements they do not genuinely accept. This risk is especially acute in disputes involving economically vulnerable groups, where power imbalances are stark. The success of ADR in Pakistan will therefore depend on how intelligently it is implemented.