Mediation as a solution to case backlog in Uganda: a case study of the Makawa Chief Magistrate’s Court

Abstract

Dispute Resolution through Civil Courts in Uganda has failed to overcome the civil case backlog. Besides the complaints and outcry from the public, this problem has persisted. People spend years in court over a matter that could have been solved easily and in a short period of time if parties agreed to use other Alternative Dispute Resolution like Mediation. Research and statistics have showed that the Commercial Court in Uganda who are the pioneers of mediation managed to immensely reduce their case backlog when they employed mediation as a tool. Also, according to the Judiciary Report on case backlog of 29th March 2017 indicates that alternative dispute resolution beyond the ordinary civil litigation procedure managed to handle a big a percentage of cases. It is expected that the optimization of the implementation of mediation which has been known and applied in several other countries like USA, China, Middle East can help to overcome the civil case backlog in courts. This study examined the effectiveness of mediation in curbing case backlog, the legal and institutional framework governing mediation in Uganda and factors affecting mediation as a tool to case backlog. A review of related literature was carried out on existing information on the specific variables of this paper to comprehend the problem, enrich and supplement the study findings and in order to further achieve the aim of this study, interviews were conducted on different court officers and most of the courts’ decisions, recent or old have been considered in order to find out how they have dealt with the issue in the past and whether their attitude has changed to reflect the current position in Uganda. The opinions and thoughts of scholars and judicial officers on this matter were examined in order to ascertain their opinion on the legal framework.