Cost-effective ADR mediation mechanism to attract more investors
By Asad Cheema

ISLAMABAD—The Senior legal advisor of the World Bank Peter Kyle met Federal Minister for Law, Justice and Human Rights Wasi Zafar to review the progress of the Alternative Dispute Resolution mediation project.
Kyle said that the international Finance Corporation is quite ahead with the project and has already signed a Memorandum of Understanding on November 123 with Sindh High Court. He appreciated the cooperation and efforts of Law Ministry to promote and institutionalize the process of mediation in Pakistan and said that once the mediation centres are in place, their positive impact on Pakistan's judicial system would serve as an example for other countries where heavy commercial litigation is causing huge backlog of court cases.
The MoU signed between the Ministry and IFC in this regard has committed them both to set up the ADR mediation centre in the country, its pilot project at Karachi will soon be functional. This is the outcome of the untiring efforts of the Ministry and IFC, the Ministry and IFC interacted at every level during the past 1 year to introduce and incorporate the mediation mechanism in Pakistan.
Commercial disputes settlement in Pakistan has created a huge backlog in court cases, this has been recognized by the Ministry and as an essential part of the on-going judicial reforms process the mediation mechanism is initiated to introduce in the country, "speedy" and "cost effective" resolution of court referred disputes.
Ay the first step the ministry provided infrastructure and related support to IFC for the project, and is now preparing legal framework to incorporate and enhance the mediation process in the normal judicial practice, after drafting and vetting of the required law the next step would be physical setup of the medication center by the IFC which is going to be in consultation with the Ministry, courts and stakeholders.
The Ministry and IFC agreed upon certain steps to ensure that once in place the mediation mechanism does not become redundant, for this the Ministry laid stress on raising awareness among the stakeholders to resolve to mediation in commercial cases which should be encouraged as an accepted legal practice in Pakistan.