ADR can reduce violence - Dispute resolution expert

A dispute resolution expert, Austin Gamey has urged the government to incorporate the teaching of mediation into the educational curricular as a means of resolving issues to inculcate in the youth the need to engage each other during a misunderstanding.

He said it would promote peace and harmony compared to the adversarial means of going to the law court to seek redress.

Mr. Gamey made the statement while explaining the importance of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) on Radio Ghana’s flagship programme, ‘Behind The News’ which falls under the USAID Justice Sector Support Activity (JSSA).

The programme was aimed at educating the general public on bail and the importance of ADR.

He stressed that the use of mediation through ADR is one of the ways to drastically reduce divisions and educating the youth to patronize it will curtail future violence.

“It is for people to have a paradigm shift from the traditional, adversarial, and let me show you that I have authority over you. These are things that do not help. It is for people to avail themselves of issues that confront both parties to be resolved through mediation otherwise when they go to court and one loses and the other wins, they may not talk again,” he said.

He added, "that is why youth conflict resolution and peer mediation are very critical. We have to organize the students and the entire school system from Class one to Junior High School to be taught conflict resolution. The teachers must also be trained on self-mediation, leadership, and managerial mediation so that they can guide the students. You will see that there will be complete peace in the country because by the time they grow up they will not kill each other when they go to vote during elections."

An Assistant Legal Aid officer, Mamoud Sani entreated the public to resort to ADR in resolving issues as their first point of call to help reduce the backlog of cases, which are unattended to at the courts. He, therefore, suggested for legislation to back the use of ADR as the first point of call.

A Rule of Law Specialist on the USAID JSSA, Enoch Jengre said public awareness has been initiated as part of the implementation of the JSSA to get the general public to patronize ADR while enhancing justice delivery.