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Comparative analysis of judicial corruption
The Madaripur Legal Aid Association (MLAA), a legal service NGO, pioneered the concept of NGO-modified shalish and trained other NGOs in its techniques. The MLAA addresses clients’ problems through three main options: the courts, utilising MLAA-affiliated lawyers if clients have been victimised by severe criminal conduct; the mediation of its field workers (who refer the clients to shalish if their initial efforts fail); or shalish that the field workers organise and whose members MLAA has recruited and trained. The NGO, Nagorik Uddyog, trains alternative shalish panels and ‘legal aid committees’ to review all shalish sessions (whether conducted by its own panels or others).13 These efforts have undercut a diverse array of corrupt practices. They counteract the power of the aforementioned ‘touts’ who, for a fee paid by a disputant’s family, exploit their (apparent) legal knowledge to sway a shalish panel’s deliberations. They have also helped reduce the practice that ill-informed divorced couples must endure if they wish to reconcile. Through intentional misinterpretation of religious law and general ignorance, an intermediary with religious credentials (such as a local imam) might tell a couple that the woman must first marry and sleep with another man – often the intermediary himself – before re-marrying her original husband. Research suggests that NGO-modified shalish is the most effective forum for delivering a degree of justice and alleviating poverty.14 Though self-reporting must be taken with a pinch of salt, NGO records indicate high rates of successful dispute resolution: 88 per cent by the MLAA and 75 per cent by the development NGO, Ganoshahajjo Sangstha.15 One final and unfortunate development regarding shalish deserves mention. Over the past few years, a combustible mix of violence, intimidation and political patronage has increased in Bangladesh, even at the village level. The ramifications are that criminal elements, often with ties to political parties, seek to dominate shalish decision making in some communities. This emerging reality sees young thugs, rather than elders and traditional elites, controlling the process. Putting aside this recent development, it would be an overstatement to suggest that NGO efforts have eliminated corruption and bias in shalish. But where NGOs are active, they have ameliorated these deeply engrained problems and started down the long road towards making shalish a more equitable process. Given how corruption is entwined with other biased aspects of shalish, addressing one problem often helps to address the others.
13 External reviews of Nagorik Uddyog’s work have tended to validate its multi-faceted impact, including on constraining corruption of shalish. See Dina Siddiqi, Paving the Way to Justice: The Experience of Nagorik Uddyog, Bangladesh (London: One World Action, 2003); and Lena Hasle, ‘Too Poor for Rights? Access to Justice for Poor Women in Bangladesh: A Case Study’ (unpublished MSC dissertation for the London School of Economics, 2004). 14 Tatjana Haque, Karen L. Casper, Debbie Ingram and Riffat Jahan, In Search of Justice: Women’s Encounters with Alternative Dispute Resolution (Dhaka: The Asia Foundation, 2002). 15 United Nations Development Programme, Human Security in Bangladesh: In Search of Justice and Dignity (Dhaka: UNDP, 2002).