An Assistant Professor from the California State University, Sacramento, USA, Professor Nicole Fox has commended the people of Ashaiman for exploring Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) to resolve disputes in the Municipality.
She said the success stories from various cases over the years had been an inspiration to some students from her University who had even gone further to study ADR, and were making great impact from various parts of their countries.
She made the statement on Monday when 15 students from the Department of Criminal Justice, University of Califonia, Sacramento in the United States of America (USA), visited the Central Alternative Dispute Resolution Centre in the Ashaiman Municipality on a study tour.
The students had come to learn about the legal system in Ghana from a comparative lense in terms of how similar or different the justice system in Ghana was from that of America, particularly California and have a first-hand experience from the Mediators from the Central ADR.
She said it was heartwarming that despite infrastructural and logistical challenges and others which the centre was dealing with, the mediators were defying the odds to give off their best.
Professor Fox presented a laptop to the centre to support its work and expressed the hope of more success stories in future.
The Chairman for the Ghana Association of Certified Mediators and Arbitrators (GHACMA), Geogette Francois recalled that 20 years ago, some mediators from the centre were trained in conflict management and ADR at a time when Ashaiman did not have a court but had many conflict cases which they helped to resolve.
She applauded them for making good use of their training which had provided results worth touting, and reduced the workloads at the courts which had made GHACMA proud of them.
She said the visits by the California State University, Sacramento, led by the Director for the Centre for African Peace and Conflict Resolution, Professor Ernest Uwazie to the Central ADR had been mutually beneficial to both institutions, since the early 2000s as they had championed ADR and collaborated with her institution to train more mediators and also open up more centres.
The Leader for the Central ADR, Ms Justina Ativor, said the centre wouldn’t have been able to make such success if they hadn’t been well-trained by both institutions and therefore expressed her appreciation to them.
So far, the centre has mediated thousands of cases with almost 80 per cent of them resolved.
Professor Uwazie said the history of ADR in Ghana could not be written without the mention of the contribution of the Central ADR, and advised other centres to emulate their good examples.
FROM DZIFA TETTEH TAY, ASHAIMAN
