Download the file - United Nations Rule of Law

At the national level, a society’s failure to provideopportunities to all in an ethnically diverse population(poor and not-poor alike) is found in somestudies to be a drag on economic performance,making it harder for a country to grow its way outof poverty (ILO 2007: 9-10). Policymakers need toconsider how ethnic and religious cleavages within acountry, along with traditional caste or gender-basedexclusions and oligarchic traditions of domination,affect the distribution of wealth and income, andthe projected likelihood of empowering reforms.These power relations may have a significant impacton the chances of implementing Legal Empowermentof the Poor. We return to the questions of theeconomic and social context later in Section 2.AlliesThe main allied stakeholders of Legal Empowermentof the Poor policies are pro-poor communityassociations and activists of civil society. Someof these stakeholders will be local social actionor advocacy groups, such as the Indonesian LegalAid Foundation whose mission is to defend poorpeople in court and expand their rights. Allies mayalso include professional associations sympatheticto the plight of the excluded and have-nots. Forexample, Ecuador’s Association of Law SchoolDeans supports legal assistance for the indigent inthat country. National bar associations are engagedin similar activities in many nations.Certain politicians may come out as allies. It is notuncommon, for example, to find even somewhatdisreputable politicians offering to use public landto woo voters’ support in slum areas. Such personsmay not be reliable allies, however. More dependablewill be the genuine policy champions, who haveemerged from among the national or local politicalleadership to make a progressive name for themselvesas friends of legal empowerment.Some commercial enterprises, and particularlylarger companies and multinational corporations,may fall into the camp of policy allies on certainoccasions. Over 3,000 corporations in morethan 100 countries have joined the UN’s GlobalCompact, which commits them to support highstandards in the areas of the environment, humanrights and labour rights (UN 2007). These firmsoften say they would like to forge partnerships withpoor communities in the developing world to createbusiness models that are sustainable, equitableand embedded in the local culture (Hart 2005).Some signatories are turning to the poor as businesspartners, suppliers, or distributors.Nairobi, for example, has a productive alliancebetween informal entrepreneurs and larger businesses.Two business associations joined with thestreet vendors’ organisation in a dialogue with localauthorities to improve the status of street vending.Street vendors in Kenya’s capital city are subject toharassment and demand for bribes from city inspectors.The uncertainty forces the vendors to limit theirstock and hinders their productivity and income. Thetwo conventional associations had wanted to driveout street vending because of litter and crowding,but came around because, among other things, ofa growing realisation that the outdoor presence ofvendors limits crime and thus is good for everyone’sbusiness. Interestingly, the vendors’ group wants itsmembers to pay licensing fees, on the argument thatpaying gives the members legal cover and providesleverage for government services (Kamunyori 2007).It should go without saying that these observationsdo not mean every self-described ally of the pooris a true friend of the legal empowerment agenda.The real world is far more subtle and complex thanthat. Some grassroots groups may feel threatenedby Legal Empowerment of the Poor if they do nothave the lead in directing the movement. Stakeholderanalysis cannot be done by mechanisticallyapplying generic labels to pre-determined groups of294