Barbados now has more than 50 mediators who can help clear thousands of cases in the High Court.
And Chief Justice Sir Marston Gibson has signalled his intention to push mediation, now that there are enough of those mediators to deal with the backlog.
He made his intentions clear this afternoon while delivering the feature address at a mediation ceremony at the 3W’s pavilion of the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, where 44 mediators received their certificates.
“Part of the reason we have not trumpeted mediation nearly as much as we will going forward is because, up until this point, we only had nine mediators on the roster and we didn’t want to overload them with the 2 500 cases that come in every year.
“What we would have done, essentially, is not to resolve the backlog but to transfer it and we had no intentions of doing that. We wanted to have mediators who could handle the inflow of cases and I can now say that we do…” Sir Marston said.
“I’ve always said that I’d be happy when we have at least 50 mediators on our roster. Well, by the time this evening’s proceedings are over we will have 53 and I am still not satisfied.”
The Chief Justice said research had shown that cases were resolved more quickly through mediation than through judges.
“The parties themselves resolve the matter; a mediator does not decide. What a mediator does is to get the parties to a point where they are both not just on the same page and the same line, but perhaps even on the same letter of the alphabet,” Sir Marston said.
“There have been many studies . . . which have shown that [in] mediated cases that reach consensual and amicable resolution, the decisions last a lot longer than judgements written by judges…as the parties tend to be more compliant.”
Canadian High Commissioner to Barbados Marie Legault revealed that her country has assisted in training 145 mediators throughout the region.
She said mediation had three key benefits: it delivers better judgments; it is less costly; and it avoids prolonged mitigation.
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