UNDP Oslo Governance Centre

Legal Empowerment of the Poor

As the Oslo Governance Centre worked to develop an analytical framework for better understanding of principles and goals of pro poor and democratic land governance, it became clear that land governance is linked to the legal empowerment of the poor discourse, with special reference to property rights. 

In an effort to contribute to the on-going deliberations regarding UNDP’s follow up to the final report  of the Commission on the Legal Empowerment of the Poor http://www.undp.org/legalempowerment/reports/concept2action.html (June 2008), and taking country office needs and concerns into account, the Oslo Governance Centre produced a series of discussion papers and a brief highlighting some key issues linking UNDP’s approach to democratic governance and a possible legal empowerment of the poor agenda. 

In an attempt to deepen understanding of the regional context of legal empowerment of the poor, OGC produced two regional analyses using the national consultations of the CLEP in Latin America and Asia.  The experience in Latiin America was shared in a presentation to 12 other country offices in a land governance meeting in November 2008 in Oslo. The regional analysis in Asia was provided as background paper to the first regional dialogue on legal empowerment in Bangkok in March 2009.

To better understand the country level context of legal empowerment, OGC invited
UNDP Pakistan [a One-UN pilot country] to participate in the 2008 OGC fellowship program. The UNDP
Pakistan country officer produced a paper summarizing future possibilities for a legal empowerment of the poor agenda in Pakistan (forthcoming).

Capitalizing on in-house expertise with measurement tools, OGC and the legal empowerment team of the Poverty Group explored a framework for monitoring and assessing progress towards legal empowerment (forthcoming).

OGC organized a panel discussion on the linkages of land governance and legal empowerment. It invited the views of former advisors to the CLEP property rights task force as well as the views of international NGOs such as the International Land coalition, the views of Norwegian NGOs and independent scholars. The field experience of UNDP country offices [e.g. Egypt, Indonesia, China, Albania] were presented. See workshop report under Land Governance Project