Hubei leverages role of mediation in dispute resolution

In the recent concluded national mediation work conference, 13 people's mediation committees and 41 people's mediators from Hubei province were honored for their work.

The justice department of the province has fully leveraged the fundamental role of mediation in resolving disputes, striving to improve the working mechanism that integrates people's mediation, administrative mediation and judicial mediation.

Among them, in the province's capital city Wuhan, each mediation committee at sub-district or township level is equipped with two full-time people's mediators, and each industry-specific professional mediation committee now has three people's mediators ready to provide accessible and efficient dispute resolution services to local residents.

According to statistics, Hubei has 123,000 people's mediators, 14,000 of them working full-time. The province has established 30,241 people's mediation organizations, along with 1,245 industry-specific professional mediations in sectors such as medical services. There are 632 lawyers' mediation organizations province-wide. A network of mediation organizations that covers key sectors and key units at both urban and rural area has been formed, achieving the goal of addressing and resolving disputes through mediation as much as possible.

In the meantime, the province has established a comprehensive mediation system, ensuring that mediation work develops on the tracks of rule of law in a standardized way. A circular has been issued by the province's justice department to ensure the judicial offices in fulfilling their responsibilities in guiding mediation work. 

Measures have been taken to consolidate the coordination of litigation and mediation in resolving disputes. Making mediation an important approach for resolving disputes has now become a shared consensus in the province.

For example, the justice department of the province's Xiangyang city has coordinated the department of housing and urban-rural development to establish a people's mediation committee for real estate and property disputes. So far, the committee has mediated 4,266 cases related to real estate and such disputes, involving over 50,000 people and a total of 300 million yuan (about $42 million).  As a result, the property dispute cases at local courts at municipal and county levels witnessed a decrease of 40 percent.

People's mediation studios were established in local grassroots people's courts, public security stations, traffic police brigades and petition departments to handle mediation cases.

Furthermore, the province has also introduced measures to promote the construction of "one-stop" diversified mediation platforms.

Since 2019, people's mediation organizations at all levels across the province have conducted1.02 million dispute investigations and mediated about 1.49 million cases, with a success rate of 96 percent.