Journal of Governance and Innovation

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The Village Courts in Bangladesh: Review and Analysis

Abstract

Access to justice paves pathways for overcoming human poverty. Three important studies – baseline survey for the Village Courts in 2010, review of social barrier and limitation of Village Courts in 2012 and mid-term review of Village Courts project in 2013 – reveal that poor people in Bangladesh have very limited access to state courts which has made them interested in local justice systems for resolving their disputes, but the local informal justice system shalish becomes de facto, to a great extent, with corruption, biasness and imposition of decisions including fatwa. NGO-led alternative dispute resolution (ADR) – another non-state rural justice system – is a good one, but new in Bangladesh and yet to be scaled-up everywhere. The state-led local justice systems are ‘Arbitration Council’ and ‘Village Courts’. The former one deals with family matters in both urban and rural areas under the ‘Muslim Family Laws Ordinance 1961’, while the later one was originally established under the ‘Village Courts Ordinance 1976’ so as to deal with petty criminal and civil disputes in rural Bangladesh but in practice such court was not active. In 2006, Village Courts were constituted again with the provisions of the ‘Village Courts Act 2006’, which has now subsequently adopted with the ‘Village Courts (Revision) Act, 2013’. The Government takes phase by phase implementation strategy with the Act to activate village courts. Initially at the first phase 500 out of 4,500 Union Parishads (UPs) were selected by the Government through ‘Activating Village Courts in Bangladesh (AVCB)’ project so as to activate Village Courts, the number of which was then reduced to 350 UPs. The lens of the study includes approach, outcomes and challenges of the Village Courts system and policy recommendations thereafter. The study follows Focused Synthesis and Participant Observation methods.

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