Problems and Obstacles in the Mediation of Civil Disputes in Community Justice

Abstract

This research aims to study on civil case disputes mediation in community justice under the Dispute Mediation Act, B.E.2562 (2019) in order to facilitate access to the justice system for people in remote areas. The study encompasses qualitative research from documents, e.g. existing law, legal text books, as well as a comparative study of the law of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, France, Singapore and India. In addition, in-depth interviews for obtaining data in municipalities and remote areas of the North, Northeast and South of Thailand, including interviews with researchers on dispute mediation and law enforcement, have been included. The study found that building up confidence for parties in a dispute is an important problem because the court’s decision is based on evidence, whereas mediation is an alternative procedure which is based on the informed consent and informed self-determination of the parties in a dispute. The mediators, who have the duty to keep the procedure secret, and to guide the procedure in conformity with the law, cannot issue a decision. Therefore, the definition of “mediation” in Article 3 should be further qualified to include “the informed self-determination of the parties in a dispute”. Article 10 (1) stipulates that mediators must successfully completed the dispute training under the programme accredited by the Commission on National Development of Justice Administration.  Exceptions to this provision should be those who have experience in dispute settlement, e.g. judges, prosecutors, mediators in professional sectors, etc. The provision of Article 22, which states that parties in a dispute must select mediators from the list of mediators established by the competent authority, should be amended to allow parties in dispute to select mediators from outside such list. The ceiling of damages payable in a dispute fixed by Article 20 (4) at 5 million baht should be deleted.