Enhancing Access to Justice through Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) in Ghana’s Judicial System

Abstract

The right to access justice is a fundamental pillar of a democracy governed by the rule of law. In Ghana, however, the judiciary was all too often constrained by case backlogs, high litigation costs and procedural delays, which eroded public confidence. In view of these issues, the judiciary launched in 2005 a programme of court-based alternative dispute resolution (ADR) which was formally incorporated in 2010 by the ADR Act (Law 798). This paper analyses the development, use and impact of alternative dispute resolution in Ghana and, in particular, the role it plays in improving access to justice. The methodology used in the study was a scope-integrated integrative review covering the period 2000-25. These included the Judicial Service’s annual reports, the programme documents, the evaluations of civil society and non-governmental organisations, peer-reviewed literature and media reports. Critical material was screened and analysed thematically to define the design of the programme, its uptake, its results and the obstacles to its effectiveness. The results show that since its establishment, ADR has resolved over 30,000 disputes, with an average resolution rate of around 50 percent of cases submitted to it. The main contributions are to reduce court congestion, litigation costs and to develop reconciliation in family, land and commercial disputes. However, some barriers remain, such as a lack of awareness among citizens, a lack of capacity among mediators, uneven funding, cultural beliefs that settlement is a sign of weakness and unresolved issues of the enforceability of mediated settlements. The review concluded that alternative dispute resolution has become indispensable as a complement to litigation and as a culturally resonant and cost-effective way of obtaining justice. To sustain these gains more mediation training and more robust monitoring and evaluation systems are needed to cement ADR as a sustainable pillar of Ghana’s judicial system.