Predicting Factors of Trust on Community Based Dispute Resolution: Evidence from Azad Jammu & Kashmir

Abstract

Nowadays in Pakistan, there is countless burden on Pakistani courts. There are over 1.8 million cases that are pending. Similarly, in Azad Jammu & Kashmir, the Judiciary is also facing pendency of more than 43000 cases. The hard geography and strong social bindings in Azad Jammu & Kashmir advocate the people to adopt the alternates to resolved disputes. The Alternative Dispute Resolution falls into two broad categories, the courts annexed options and the Community based options. The end goal of a dispute resolution process is to offer a fair way for everyone involved in a complaint or dispute to deal with it. The defecto nature of Community Based Dispute Resolution is working through mediation, conciliation, and arbitration. The public trust on the community-based dispute resolution is studied as the social capital with three dimensions of social capital i.e. trust, networks and norms of cooperation associated with bonding, bridging and linking. The current research explored those predicting factors (accessibility, participation, and transparency etc) and their relationship with the public trust on Community Based Dispute Resolution. Sample size for the present study was 348 (victims and perpetuators) total selected cases are 174 each by using Statistical formulas. The study concluded that alternative dispute resolution procedures had a lot of role to play settling the disputes in study locale.