The Legal Empowerment Agenda

Despite providing society with a set of crucial services, large groups of workers in the informal economy are subject to exclusion and discrimination, and their lives are characterised by various types of vulnerabilities and deprivations that result from the denial of social, economic, political and legal protection. Although not new to the development vocabulary, the informal economy has received renewed attention in recent years largely due to the ILO's 'decent work' agenda and various efforts to promote 'legal empowerment of the poor'. With an explicit focus on labour rights, the book focuses on a nuanced understanding of the regulatory and operational challenges and dilemmas related to implementing the two approaches in selected countries in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition to analyzing structures and relations of power between the formal and the informal economies, the book critically discusses the work of governments, civil society organizations and the poor themselves to address the daily challenges of living in the informal economy.

Defined as a process which increases access to justice and the legal rights of the poor, 'legal empowerment' is increasingly being considered to be an important tool in anti-poverty efforts in developing countries. This volume discusses the opportunities and constraints related to the enhancement of legal empowerment in the informal economy, with a focus on labour and business rights in Africa.

Despite providing society with a set of crucial services, large groups of workers in the informal economy are subject to exclusion and discrimination, and their lives are characterised by various types of vulnerabilities and deprivations that result from the denial of social, economic, political and legal protection. Although not new to the development vocabulary, the informal economy has received renewed attention in recent years largely due to the ILO's 'decent work' agenda and various efforts to promote 'legal empowerment of the poor'. With an explicit focus on labour rights, the book focuses on a nuanced understanding of the regulatory and operational challenges and dilemmas related to implementing the two approaches in selected countries in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition to analyzing structures and relations of power between the formal and the informal economies, the book critically discusses the work of governments, civil society organizations and the poor themselves to address the daily challenges of living in the informal economy.

"The vast majority of the word's people lives outside the law and thus does not have a chance to better their lives and climb out of poverty. This causes national and global stagnation. The remedy for the exclusion is inclusion through Legal Empowerment of the Poor which is important economically, politically, socially, and morally. The Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor (2005) was the first global initiative to focus on the link between exclusion, poverty, and the law, and was hosted by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in New York. This first report of the Commission covers the following topics: making the law work for everyone; the four pillars of legal empowerment; legal empowerment is smart politics and good economics; agenda for change; and implementation strategies. The report is based on research, analysis and consultations in more than 20 developing countries, and encourages debates and discussions towards realization of Millennium Development Goals."--Publisher's description.

How best to improve the position of the world's poorest people remains one of the major issues facing the human species. This book investigates the role that legal empowerment and rights (including human rights) can play in tackling poverty and enabling poor people in developing countries to take action to improve their positions.

Legal empowerment is a powerful tool for reducing poverty. It gives people the knowledge, skills, and confidence to participate in development projects. It promotes inclusive growth, which reduces poverty by building people's capacity to improve their lives. Inclusive growth is a goal of Strategy 2020, which guides the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in its mission to promote gender equality, empower women, and achieve the Millennium Development Goals. The publication presents the findings of a project funded by ADB, carried out by The Asia Foundation, and conducted in Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Pakistan. The project aimed to identify and test legal empowerment strategies that increase access to basic social services, productive resources, and opportunities by women and other disadvantaged groups and to incorporate legal empowerment initiatives into mainstream development projects.

This book seeks to be relevant to the call to address inequalities, injustice, human rights, and social exclusion in a more integrated, holistic, and transformative manner. It seeks to do so by looking at what we have learned in both the development and human rights communities. Further, it addresses fundamental obstacles that neither community has dealt with in this context, such as changing power relations. The book builds on the report of the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor entitled Making the Law Work for Everyone and draws from a wide range of published literature on relevant issues not covered in the report. Calls for holistic and transformative approaches are familiar in development circles, but putting these approaches into practice require a knowledge base beyond that covered in the traditional development literature. The book brings together this diverse literature in one place at a time when the international community is about to embark on a new era of development cooperation commonly referred to as the post-2015 agenda. The subjects covered therefore include a review of successful and unsuccessful approaches to reducing poverty and inequality; life in slums; the informal sector where the majority of the poor live; the legal empowerment of the poor; changing power relations between the haves and the have-nots; and the holistic, sustainable-livelihoods approach, in the development of which, the author has played a lead role.

This book is based on the specialized courses during the 2019 AEL summer course on Human Rights Law