Legal Aid Society (LAS) organized a two-day paralegals’ training program on Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) at a local hotel. The paralegals from Sanghar, Dadu and Shaheed Benazirabad districtswere imparted the exclusive training. ADR refers to any method of resolving disputes without litigation. ADR regroups all processes and techniques of a conflict resolution that occur without any government authority.
Mediation, Arbitration, Conciliation, Negotiationand Transaction are called the most famous ADR tools. Legal Aid Society is working on Alternate Dispute Resolution for the last four years to improve the supply and demand of ADR in eight districts of Sindh and enabled ordinary citizens to file their grievances before the ADR forums.
Talking to the media, Abbas Ali, the ADR programme manager of LAS, said that they are going to establish a sustainable mechanism whereby communities can effectively reach out to relevant ADR providers for quick and effective resolution of their justified legal needs.
“LAS has trained 192 ADR paralegals in eight districts of Sindh. The huge Community ADR Network (CAN) consisting of Sixty-four ADR paralegals groups has been established. The ADR paralegals have now been prepared to educate members of the community who are involved or interested in social work on a volunteer basis.
LAS has also prepared a cadre of trained Salis members in almost all the districts of Sindh in the past,” elaborated Abbas. Sharing their mixed views, the paralegals said that they are now prepared to identify and refer the cases towards ADR mechanisms, including Offices of theOmbudsman.
“In their communities, they will organize ‘legal clinics’ in coordination with LAS field teams to raise awareness about ADR,” they opined. The two-day ADR event had an exclusive presence of Angbeen Mirza and Maham Shahzad as consultants. The both trainers through various online sessions provided training to all the paralegals in highly official manners.
LAS team members, including Danish Soomro, Sonia Arain, Zohaib Shaikh, HoushMangi, Benazir and others, also played an active role to make the program successful.
