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Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR) is an important tool to strengthen positive peace and it got cover in Pakistan through Alternate Dispute Resolution Act, 2017. 36 ADR Centres established by Lahore High Court at District headquarters have shown success rate of about 45%, successfully mediating 12943 references out of 28845, sent between June, 2017 and October, 2018. However, such performance of the judges appointed on mediation centres has not been considered up to the mark. This paper makes a comparison between the skill set of a mediator with that of a judge, an arbitrator or a panch and explores whether the skill set of judges suffices them to carry out successful mediation. This qualitative study has used two methods for triangulation of the findings; namely, focus group discussion and one-on-one interviews. The paper concludes with a recommendation to develop a permanent pool of mediators, comprising judicial officers trained in mediator's skill set and nonjudicial experts, who could contribute positively and diversely to make mediation as successful in Pakistan as in other parts of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relations between Pakistan and India have been viewed largely from a classical realism perspective. India's government under Modi has redefined policy outlook towards Pakistan. An aggressive posturing is definitely to address domestic political gains by linking disturbance in Kashmir and internal security with Pakistan's alleged "interference". This however has serious repercussions on long term regional peace. The situation suffers due to the dilemma of different perspectives on what constitutes peace in South Asia. While Pakistan's emphasis is on cordial relations with all neighbours in the region particularly with India- with dignity and resolution of Kashmir issue. For India, peace is only possible if Pakistan accepts India's assertion that terrorism inside India is only due to Pakistan's policy of accommodating "terrorists" and facilitating their activities against India. This makes any meaningful dialogue to move towards peace simply unachievable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voluntary compliance not only lowers the cost of law enforcement but also breeds a culture of lawfulness, where compliance becomes convenient than breach. Such a culture, is generally named as a culture of lawfulness. The voluntary compliance is adversely affected if the cultural needs and demands are not attended properly while making laws. It creates a gap between law in the book and law in action. In such situations breach and avoidance of law becomes convenient than compliance and a weak culture of lawfulness is the result. In Pakistan, the culture of lawfulness is weak which indicates that the gap between law and action needs a thorough analysis to find out where law and culture are not coinciding and what are the factors responsible for the gap, to suggest a practical remedy to minimize the gap. This article is an effort to qualitatively analyze the factors, after a detailed review of the statutory laws, Judge made laws and keen observation of the practices of people, along with other accompanying factors like religion, cultural groups and sub groups diaspora, education and economic factors etc. The outcome is a short-term resolve based on social marketing approach and a long-term solution in the form of a holistic, community based, law-making approach to plug the gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the emergence of new challenges the traditional approaches have now been taken over by the non-traditional ones. Either it is the hard power or soft power every state mobilizes it to achieve the strategic ends. This paper focuses on India's soft power capabilities and its extensive use, particularly that of mass media for projecting country's image as the world's largest successful democracy and vocals of world peace. However, the employment of this strategic tool by India is not restricted to its image building but it is geared more on tarnishing the image of other countries particularly Pakistan. The paper further examines Indian media manipulation through 'Liberal' lens, which is based on liberals view of 'free media' and 'freedom of speech' identify Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's anti-Pakistan and Hindu nationalism agenda along with their negative framing of news contents targeting Pakistan. The key findings substantiate that India uses propaganda strategy against Pakistan, utilizing Sun Tzu and Kautilya's deception and isolation concept in their foreign policy towards Pakistan. It verifies that comparing all previous governments, Modi 'sarkar' has extensively mobilized media as soft power for achieving its strategic objectives. Indian new strategy of using soft power is not effective and conducive for regional peace at the moment rather it has proved to be supplementing its already existing hard power rhetoric for its gluttony of regional supremacy. The Bharatya Janata Party's (BJP) government seems to be adapting 'Liberal' approach, however, in practical terms the essence of 'Realist' sentiments are deeply engraved that would not be easy to root out. The paper concludes that BJP's xenophobic rhetoric is pro-Hindu nationalism and anti-Pakistan. It uses media and other concepts of strategic philosophies as the soft power and employs it as a strategic weapon for attaining regional hegemony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Variant views, on the existence of religious radicalisation as a problem in Pakistan, have restricted sustainable initiative for de-radicalisation. The culture of not challenging the violent discourse is the real problem creating an intolerant society in Pakistan. The present narrative of the militants is based on the notion that Pakistan's identity, as an Islamic state, is under attack and people can only prove to be good Muslim if they oppose the state following the western ideals of liberalism and democracy. The paper examines the contradiction between the existing narrative preventing the efforts to eradicate the mind-set based on hatred and intolerance and the need for a counter-narrative to reclaim Pakistan's identity as a progressive Muslim state. It is important to note that military operations against terrorism can only treat the symptom but not the cause. The problems multiply due to lack of a unified approach to identify the issue and its solution. The way religious radicalisation is defined by the conservative groups is completely different from the secular forces in the country; the majority of the moderates prefer to remain silent on the issue which is often misunderstood by the West as a tacit support to religious radicalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]