How can the poor use the law to their benefit? Should development agencies integrate legal services and grassroots development? What impact might this have on governance, poverty and human rights?

Some answers spring from legal empowerment – the use of legal services and related activities to increase disadvantaged groups’ control over their lives. Multi-country studies conducted separately by the Asia Foundation (under the auspices of the Asian Development Bank) and the Ford Foundation, as well as current research supported by the Open Society Institute, help explain how non-governmental organisations (NGOs) partner with the poor regarding legal issues in developing and transitional societies. These largely qualitative inquiries indicate that many NGOs (and similarly oriented law school programmes) help improve governance and reduce poverty as they address human rights (including minority and gender rights), the environment, agrarian reform, labour and other issues.

Typically, these NGO initiatives do not involve only lawyers and are not confined to legal services, such as litigation, representation, negotiation, counselling and training. Instead they integrate that legal work with other efforts that build the capacities and power of marginalised populations – hence the term ‘legal empowerment’. These efforts can involve group formation, community development, community organising, paralegal training, political mobilisation, administrative advocacy and alliance building (with both government and civil society elements if possible). Invoking the law, they form a rights-based development strategy.

Key findings include:

• Legal empowerment can improve the poor’s material resources and circumstances. It also alleviates poverty in the broader sense of strengthening the poor’s participation in decisions affecting their lives.
• Legal empowerment helps the poor understand and influence government, particularly regarding the rights, needs and issues to which they attach highest priority.
• While basic legal knowledge is helpful, often the disadvantaged cannot assert their rights unless they are organised. Thus the notion of ‘knowledge is power’ does not carry as much weight as that of ‘organisation is power’.
• Civil society shows greater dedication and creativity than government in constructing legal empowerment strategies. Vibrant civil society, and laws that protect it, are important for such strategies.
• Many of the poor’s legal needs and avenues for addressing them do not involve the courts. Administrative bodies, local governments, legislatures, alternative dispute resolution and informal processes often offer better vehicles for seeking justice.
• Lawyers do not always play leading roles in legal empowerment. They may instead support the work of development NGOs, community leaders and the poor themselves.
• While legal empowerment contributes to good local governance and getting laws enforced, it can also advance national legal and institutional reform by educating, mobilising and drawing on the experience of disadvantaged groups.

Policy recommendations include the following:

• Legal empowerment should be integrated into mainstream socio-economic development projects. This could benefit projects and populations concerned with natural resources, women’s health, rural development, land tenure, decentralisation and other fields by helping the poor engage with legal issues and institutions involved.
• Legal empowerment should also be supported under the rubric of building the rule of law and human rights, because it directly addresses many of the poor’s greatest legal needs.
• Such support should be focused on NGOs and law school programmes wherever possible.
• Law and development should be integrated by building bridges between the professionals involved. Law students should be engaged with development work through innovative clinical programmes. Development workers should be introduced to legal knowledge and services.
• The recent qualitative studies should be complemented by supporting surveys and related research that quantify the impact of legal empowerment. For example, demographically similar intervention and control populations should be compared.
• Especially where civil society is weak, long-term strategies should be employed, realistic expectations should be retained, and inter-community and international exchanges should be used to fuel the flow of new ideas.

Source(s):
‘Legal Empowerment: Advancing Good Governance and Poverty Reduction’, in Law and Policy Reform at the Asian Development Bank, by Stephen Golub and Kim McQuay Manila, 2001 Full document.
Insights #43 'Getting rights right: Is access to justice as important as access to health or education?' Full document.

id21 Research Highlight: 2 October 2002

Further Information:
Stephen Golub
Open Society Institute and International Development and Law
Boalt Hall School of Law
University of California at Berkeley
6553 Farallon Way
Oakland
California 94611, USA

Tel: +1 510 653-3196
Fax: +1 510 653-5167
Contact the contributor: Sjg49er@aol.com

Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, USA

Other related links:
'Making law matter'

IOG is a research organisation focusing on the promotion of effective governance

'City politics: a voice for the poor?' Insights #38

See id21's links page on Access to Justice