Abstract :
The Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor has made a considerable
contribution to the international development community by focusing attention
on concrete legal needs of impoverished populations. As such, it constitutes a fine
start for international, regional and domestic efforts to pull together a legal empowerment
agenda that will directly benefit such groups. Nevertheless, the
Commission’s report falls short in key respects. It displays an inordinate faith in
employing rational persuasion to grapple with a widespread problem it highlights
– how to get self-interested politicians and other elites to forfeit their own
advantage for the well-being of society. It is similarly stumbles in addressing how
to best implement ambitious legal reforms, so that they have actual impact and do
not simply exist on paper. And it does not reconcile the Commission’s fundamentally
top-down approach with an area of development that is bottom-up in nature.
Going forward, it is important to build on the Commission’s good start, but depart
from its false and even counterproductive steps; the international community
should instead draw on successful country-specific legal empowerment experience
from diverse contexts. This features increased investment in civil society efforts to
make the rule of law a reality, since such initiatives have a better track record than
government-centered programs that mainly rely on elite good will. It more specifically
involves enhanced long-term funding for domestic and international NGO
efforts, both in the form of legal services for the disadvantaged and by integrating
such services into broader socioeconomic development programs. The international
community should also support impact-oriented applied research and move
toward establishing a Millennium Development Goal for legal empowerment.
