Speaking at an event on Monday, Supreme Court Justice Miangul Hassan Aurangzeb urged judges to refer more cases to mediation without treating referral as an abdication of adjudication. He announced plans to train judges and court officials as mediators and to establish a Supreme Court-based mediation centre with financial assistance from the United Nations Development Programme.
Why it matters is obvious: by September 2025, the federal law minister was citing a backlog of 2.4 million cases in Pakistan’s courts, including over 300,000 in the high courts and 1.8 million in the district courts, where civil disputes can take up to 15 years to conclude. ADR, by contrast, is said to resolve disputes in an average of 75 days. This backlog stifles economic growth, frightens investors, keeps victims waiting years for remedy and fuels cynicism about the state’s commitment to justice.
The Supreme Court’s own pendency had reached over 60,446 cases in early 2024 before declining to 56,169 by October 2025, its first recorded drop in nearly a decade.
Justice Aurangzeb acknowledged how Pakistan had only begun formal mediation in 2022. Turkiye institutionalised the system in 2013 and had three million mediated settlements by 2022, a figure now closer to nine million. Training twelve mediators in Islamabad will not relieve the backlog. Most suits languish in lower courts, and therefore, mediation must travel to family courts, tenancy fights, inheritance disputes and local land conflicts.
The cost of delay is borne disproportionately by women and the poor. A commission report found that unresolved gender?based violence cases jumped from 21,891 to 39,655, an 81?per cent increase, while conviction rates were stuck at just five per cent.
If mediation is used in such disputes without safeguards, survivors could be pressured into compromise by male relatives or religious elders. ADR needs legal aid, gender?sensitive mediators and oversight, or it will reinforce patriarchy.
Structural reform cannot be escaped. Former senior puisne judge Syed Mansoor Ali Shah has repeatedly called for adopting ADR and warned that delay deters investment and erodes public confidence. He has also proposed age-tracking protocols and AI scheduling to find dormant suits and fix hearing dates. Legislators must harmonise ADR laws, set standards, cap fees and demand that mediators reflect society. Bar councils and governments should underwrite mediation for poor litigants. Digital filing, online dispute resolution and public legal education will bring justice closer to villages. Without such investments, mediation may simply shift the backlog into unprepared rooms.
There is a temptation to treat mediation as a cheap fix, yet experience abroad suggests otherwise. Turkey succeeded only after mandating mediation in specific disputes and building institutional capacity. Singapore and the UK pair mediation with strict deadlines and electronic case management. If Pakistan adopts the name without the architecture, the process will become another waiting room. Millions of citizens now watch their lives wither while cases languish for years on end, but changing that should be our national project. *