January 20, 2023: The Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi through its Center for Executive Education (CEE) launched the IBA Dispute Resolution Forum (IBA-DRF) in 2019, to promote mediation as an appropriate means of resolving disputes, particularly in the civil/commercial space.
On January 04, 2023, the High Court of Sindh through its order approved the IBA Dispute Resolution Forum (DRF) as the approved Alternate Dispute Resolution Center. Under the order, the High Court of Sindh will assign dispute cases to IBA DRF, which will be resolved through IBA-certified mediators.
The IBA-DRF is inspired by the Harvard Negotiation Project, a project of Harvard University on the issues of negotiation and conflict resolution. The IBA-DRF is spearheaded by the ADR Team at IBA comprising of individuals including, Navin Merchant, Convenor; Nausheen Ahmad; Altaf Qureshi; and Sohaib Saleem, Focal Person.
The IBA-DRF seeks to implement court-based or non-court-based practices of dispute resolution and negotiation, by working on real-world disputes, improving conflict intervention methods, providing education and training, and writing and disseminating conflict resolution techniques and practices.
In continuation of efforts, the Legal Skills Forum (LSF) was also established by CEE and ORIC at IBA in December 2022, through which IBA LSF will offer trainings of international recognition and capacity building of legal skills. The LSF will also provide consultancies in legal domains to corporates, local and government organizations.
For further details on IBA-DRF: https://sdp.iba.edu.pk/drf.php
