How can legal empowerment reduce poverty? This report from the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor explores the relationship between poverty and access to justice. Four billion people cannot better their lives because they are excluded from the rule of law, their work and assets insecure and unprotected. A renewed anti-poverty agenda is needed to include the majority of the world’s population in the systems of rights and obligations that foster prosperity.
The Commission identifies four ‘pillars’ of legal empowerment reform required at the centre of national and international efforts to provide protection and opportunities for the poor. These are access to justice and the rule of law, property rights, labour rights and business rights. In a comprehensive agenda, the four pillars of legal empowerment reinforce each other. Effective institutions and laws give individuals the confidence to cooperate with others over time and distance, thereby steadily creating wealth. Productivity gains released through reform in one area carry over into others.
To succeed, legal empowerment has to lead to systemic change, including institutional reform. Successful approaches are likely to involve:
- Broad political coalitions that smooth the way to legal empowerment and help overcome resistance, diversion, and delay
- Knowledge of, and being attuned to, the political context and reforms based on a deep and shared understanding of local conditions in both the formal and informal economy
- Attention given in all four domains to gender issues, indigenous peoples’ rights and customary law
- The participation of the poor involving feedback in all phases of the reform and the close monitoring of the results
- Strong political leadership by presidents and prime ministers in cooperation with ministers of finance, justice, and labour, as well as bottom-up approaches.
The Commission makes a number of recommendations to the international community, civil society and other local and regional organisations. These include:
- Multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, United Nations Development Programme and International Labour Organisation must integrate the legal empowerment agenda into their strategies
- Regional political organisations, regional banks and regional UN institutions must add legal empowerment to their core missions
- Civil society and community-based organisations can connect the poor to political institutions at every level and advocate for better representation for the poor
- The business community can support and participate in reform efforts on a local and national basis
- Religious communities can translate the moral imperative of legal empowerment into concrete action
- Professional associations such as lawyers, land administration officials and urban planners can gather and disseminate information through their networks and offer political support for reforms.
