- In his opening remarks the Chief Justice noted that they have successfully applied ADR on mainly commercial, labour, tax, land and family disputes.
Image: Sania Babirye
The Chief Justice Alifonse Owinyi Dollo says Uganda's Judiciary may not address the ever growing system of case backlog by only using the courts of Law.
According to the CJ there need to expand the use of alternative Dispute Resolution which he says will help to rejuvenate the traditional systems of dispute resolution.
He made the remarks during the ongoing two day African Chief Justice Summit on Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) organized by the Judiciary in Kampala.
300 officials including; Chief Justices of Judiciaries on the African continent, justices and judged of African Judiciaries, ADR practitioners, professional associations like Uganda Law Society, East African Law Society, Association of lawyers and government ministries among others are all in attendance .
The summit aims at finding a quicker and more peaceful ways of settling disputes which in the end will reduce on case backlog.
It will also provide an opportunity to the African Judiciaries to interrogate different ADR forms as they speak to different litigants and disputants who seek dispute resolution.
In his opening remarks the Chief Justice noted that they have successfully applied ADR on mainly commercial, labour, tax, land and family disputes.
Uganda's case backlog stood at 5592(30%) cases, with a case staying in the system for over two years and above against 168007 pending cases while the total case load for financial year 2022/2023 was 422672 cases.
By the end of June 2023, the total pending cases was 156349 cases out of which 42960(27.4%) was backlog.
"These statistics my lords, Chief Justices ,your excellence show that the Judiciary may not adequately attend to the needs of our people through the formal process alone ". CJ.
He says the formal justice is ill equipped to attend to the problem of adjudication and that there is the need to look onto the traditional justice system that predated the current justice system including the African conflict resolution that looked at creating peace and harmony in society instead of punishing.