Written by: Jacques Carstens, Team Leader
The British Council's Supporting Effective Dispute Resolution (SEDR) project in Sri Lanka, funded by the European Union, is a good example of how alternative dispute resolution (ADR) can bridge the justice gap and promote peace, prosperity and building trust in conflict-affected communities. In a global context where it is estimated that five billion people are unable to solve basic justice problems, the need for innovative solutions like ADR is more pressing than ever. With nearly two thirds of the world's population lacking access to the formal justice system, projects like SEDR play a crucial role in providing effective dispute resolution services without people having to access the formal court system.
ADR as a methodology and approach is well aligned with the aims of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16 seeking to promote peaceful and inclusive societies, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels. In Sri Lanka, the island’s National Mediation Programme, which has been running for more than 30 years, is a great example of community level alternative dispute resolution in action. It is a globally unique hybrid-model, funded by the government but implemented by more than 8,500 well trained volunteer mediators. They use an interest-based mediation approach to conduct sessions on weekends in a school hall or in a temple to help ordinary Sri Lankans resolve a wide range of lower-level civil and criminal issues between individual disputants.
Annually, over 330 mediation boards, situated island-wide, deal with about 250,000 disputes without going through the formal justice system, saving time, money and providing a hyper-local pathway to people-centred justice. SEDR’s own research demonstrated more than 80 per cent of people who use the National Mediation Programme as a disputant said they would recommend this service to others, while 89 per cent said they were very happy with the way their dispute had been dealt with.
The remit of the National Mediation Programme is limited by legislation to mainly resolve disputes between individuals. The SEDR project, working in partnership with The Asia Foundation (TAF), focuses on institutional and capacity building support to Sri Lanka’s Mediation Boards Commission, whose mandate is the management and supervision of the National Mediation Programme. In addition, SEDR also works with civil society partners to strengthen community-based ADR mechanisms to address local level grievances, which fall outside the ambit of the national mediation legislation. This work predominantly focusses on three geographies, namely the Northern, Eastern and Uva provinces (6 districts in total) targeting conflict affected, vulnerable and poor communities.
As an example of our work, we have trained over 220 women and young people using the British Council's well known Active Citizens methodology, which we have augmented with ADR content. Through this training, these active citizens learned how to identify disputes in their local communities and to develop social action projects (SAPs) that were implemented in their communities to resolve local disputes and grievances. In one village, Hindu and Muslim communities were using the same burial grounds, but due to COVID this burial site was running out of space and one of these communities was trying to restrict the other from using the burial ground. Our participants in the SEDR Active Citizens programme identified this as a problem and they went through a lengthy process of mediated dialogue with these two groups to talk about the problem and to consider solutions that both parties were happy with. This grassroots approach to dispute resolution not only prevents conflict from escalating into wider violence, but also fosters trust and strengthens social cohesion among diverse communities.
Another example is one of unity through sports, where one of the SEDR Active Citizens led a social action project aiming to resolve disputes among ethnically diverse local youth groups using a shared school playground for cricket and football. Collaborating with the sports clubs, the school, and the local Community Mediation Board, they implemented a scheduling system and advocated for floodlights to extend playing time, fostering tolerance and reducing inter-ethnic tensions. This grassroots effort not only provided equitable access to the playground, but also highlighted the importance of unity and sportsmanship among the youth groups.
Our work through civil society partners like Search for Common Ground (SfCG) focuses on strengthening the ADR capacity of existing forums or, where they do not exist, establishing ADR forums to empower local leaders to identify and resolve disputes within their communities. They target existing structures like mosque or temple committees, women's groups, farmers’ organisations and fisheries societies to build their capacity to enable them to resolve disputes and play a mediating role at local level. From a sustainability perspective, the work at the community level to build ADR capacity is important as it will provide members of these communities with the knowledge, skills and understanding to facilitate and mediate disputes beyond the life of the project.
The British Council’s experience of harnessing the power of arts to bring people together to build trust and understanding is being used in SEDR’s collaboration with Sri Lanka’s Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA). Through the innovative ‘Arts-4-ADR’ project, three artists from SEDR’s target provinces are being commissioned to use their artwork to not only facilitate dialogue on the underlying causes of conflict, but also to create awareness and encourage communities to use locally available ADR pathways to resolve disputes.
By engaging with diverse communities and promoting trust-building and inclusivity, SEDR seeks to ensure the needs of vulnerable groups, including women, are met and ADR processes are widely accessible. The project has a dedicated inclusion budget and, as an example, this is used not only to ensure women’s participation in project activities, but for them to benefit directly from the interventions. For example, provisions are made for mothers to have access to childcare facilities and services at many SEDR capacity building events.
Overall, the SEDR project seeks to illustrate the power of ADR as part of a movement towards people-centred justice, which in turn strengthen social cohesion and promote sustainable development in line with British Council’s own vision of a more peaceful and prosperous world built on trust. By leveraging local resources, engaging with diverse communities, and emphasising grassroots empowerment, the SEDR project demonstrates the potential of alternative dispute resolution in transforming conflict-affected societies like Sri Lanka.
