Transforming a Time-Honored Tradition of Community Mediation
John Rieger and Tracie Yang
The Asia Foundation is celebrating its 70th anniversary in 2024. For seven decades, we have partnered with change-makers from government, civil society, the private sector, and academia to solve some of the greatest challenges facing Asia and the Pacific. To mark this milestone, we are sharing a series of highlights showing the scope and impact of our contributions past and present. We are committed to building on these achievements in the decades ahead.
As in many countries, seeking justice in a court of law can be too costly and time-consuming for ordinary citizens of Bangladesh. The time-honored shalish system of informal community mediation offers an alternative with deep roots in Bangladeshi tradition.
But tradition can harbor injustices of its own for the powerless and the marginalized.
This week, we look back three decades to a program that has transformed the delivery of justice in Bangladesh by making the shalish system more inclusive, more equitable, and more sensitive to the rights and interests of women and vulnerable groups. We’re joined by the Asia Foundation’s Kim McQuay, who was closely involved in the Foundation’s law and justice programs in Bangladesh in the mid-1990s and early 2000s.
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