legal empowerment of the poor

Legal Empowerment of the poor: Changing the Rules

of Engagement

BT Costantinos, [email protected]

www.costantinos.net https://sites.google.com/site/doncosty/home

Presentation of Background and Issue Papers Addis Abeba, Nov 30, 2006

1. Access to Justice2. Labour Rights3. Property Rights4. Entrepreneurship

Part I. Core mission and research enquiry

“the mission is to secure, enforceable rights, within an enabling environment

that expands business opportunity, entrepreneurship and access to

justice” It is yet a novel attempt at bringing in marked changes in the fulfillment of a set of normative goals and an integrative concept which aims

simultaneously to maintain or enhance resource productivity, secure their ownership of and

access to assets, resources and income earning activities, and ensure adequate stocks and flows

of goods and services.

Research enquiry I1. Access to Justice and Rule of Law

What is the main problem(s) in Ethiopia with respect to access to justice: Legal identity? Ignorance of legal rights? Unavailability of legal services? Unjust and unaccountable institutions?

What is the scope of the problem(s)?

What are the possible strategies for redressing the problem(s)?

Research enquiry II

2. Labor Rights What is the classification of informal

sector in Ethiopia (not all informal sector are poor)?

What is the practicable strategy to achieve the decent work agenda objectives in the informal sector in Ethiopia? What specific strategies could be envisaged for: direct support to informal sector workers; support to informal sector employers’ and workers’ association?

What specific barriers are faced by women in the informal sector? What are the special needs of women in the informal sector?

Research enquiry III3.Property Rights

What are the challenges in rural area with regard to property rights to the poor?

What are the challenges in urban area with regard to property rights to the poor?

How can these challenges be addressed in a prioritized way?

Research enquiry IV

4. Entrepreneurship Are there opportunities for establishing businesses and

barriers to involvement in the formal economic system? legal tools, mechanisms/instruments and institutions are

required to empower informal businesses complex business regulations or inefficient institutions

force the poor to engage in economic activities in the formal sector

innovative financial instruments are required for informal businesses to access affordable credit/capital and equity

regulatory frameworks provide the transparency and accountability necessary to provide for public faith in the formal economic system

benefits are required to attract informal businesses into formal sector?

specific needs and problems faced by women and indigenous peoples who conduct business in the informal economy and lack access to credit?

factors and conditions (enabling environment) external to the focus of the Commission’s work might have to be addressed to ensure success?

Part II

Macro-policies that inform the legal

empowerment of the poor

Constitution of the FDRE- Article 39 Rights of Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples1. Every Nation, Nationality and People in Ethiopia has an

unconditional right to self-determination, including the right to secession.

2. Every Nation, Nationality and People in Ethiopia has the right to speak, to write and to develop its own language; to express, to develop and to promote its culture; and to preserve its history.

3. Every Nation, Nationality and People in Ethiopia has the right to a full measure of self-government which includes the right to establish institutions of government in the territory that it inhabits and to equitable representation in state and Federal governments.

4. The right to self-determination, including secession, of every Nation, Nationality and People shall come into effect when a demand for secession has been approved by a two-thirds majority of the members of the Legislative Council of the Nation, Nationality or People concerned; when the Federal Government has organized a referendum where the demand for secession is supported by a majority vote in the referendum; when the Federal Government will have transferred its powers to the Council of the Nation, Nationality or People who has voted to secede; and when the division of assets is effected in a manner prescribed by law.

Constitution of Ethiopia – Article 40 -- The Right to

Property“Every Ethiopian citizen has the right to the ownership of private property. Unless prescribed otherwise by law on account of public interest, this right shall include the right to acquire, to use and, in a manner compatible with the rights of other citizens, to dispose of such property by sale or bequest of or to transfer it otherwise."Private property", for the purpose of this Article, shall mean any tangible or intangible product which has value and is produced by the labor, creativity, enterprise or capital of an individual citizen, associations which enjoy juridical personality under the law, or in appropriate circumstances, by communities specifically empowered by law to own property in common.The right to ownership of rural and urban land, as well as of all natural resources, is exclusively vested in the State and in the peoples of Ethiopia. Land is a common property of the Nations, Nationalities and Peoples of Ethiopia and shall not be subject to sale or to other means of exchange.

I: Central vs Decentralised Control1. In the creation of the nation state,

independent governments have tended to impose authority on local people. This has resulted in support for the nationalization of natural resources and policies that take little account of local needs and interests.

2. The new resource tenure regimes continue to discriminate against customary and traditional resource management cultures however sustainable, favoring instead the modern, formal sector and those having access and connections to the central authorities.

II: Customary vs. Statutory Systems1. Statutory systems of natural resource

ownership and management are based on government decrees and statutes that rarely have reference to people's aspirations, hence their alienation form public interest.

2. By comparison, customary systems, rules, and procedures (very often unwritten) often establish accountability and link the rights and responsibilities which govern resource management, thus providing a basis for conflict resolution.

III: Modern vs Local knowledge systems

1. Local people in many communities and coming from different sectors of society understand and relate to resources according to their respective knowledge systems and their management practices reflect these systems.

2. While the power of the modern sector stems, in part, from improved communication; it has largely excluded the traditional sector.

3. This has been compounded by the difficulty of communication across cultures/knowledge systems, and by ignorance of the very existence of other ways of seeing, understanding, and managing natural resources.

Rules and institutional basis for the legal empowerment of the

poor Political Openness: distinctive forms of political thought, discourse and practice, which underlies popularly elected and controlled government. Political agency: Participants in and around projects of democratisation generally constitute a network or intersection of institutions and groups which collectively exert far-reaching external influence over political reform in Africa could be included. Civil society, media, donors, legislature, executive, judiciary, Ideology: will commonly be characterized by a number of distinctive and shared elements rules of government, national and cultural

values, traditions of political discourse and arguments, modes of representation of specific interests and needs and issues.

Synergy in rights of the poor, control and sustainable livelihoods

Findings

Assessment of the legal

empowerment of the poor

Assessment of the legal and practical dimensions of Legally Empowering the Poor

(Global Integrity)

Current Policy Realities and Analytical Limitations in Current

Perspectives of Legal Empowerment of the Poor

a tendency to narrow the poverty agenda to the terms and categories of immediate, not very well considered, political and social action, a naïve realism, as it were; inattention to problems of articulation or production of sustainable livelihoods rather than simply as formal or abstract possibilities; ambiguity as to whether civil society is the agent or object of change and the role of the state; a nearly exclusive concern in certain institutional perspectives on legal empowerment with generic attributes of political organizations and consequent neglect of analysis in terms of their specific strategies and performances of organizations in processes inadequate treatment of the role of international agencies – SAPs, PRSPs…

LEGAL EMPOWERMENT OF THE POOR

STAKEHOLDERS TOOLS

Government, parastatals, armed forces, political

parties

Civil societies / NGOs, CSOs Faith Communities

Corporate CommunityEntrepreneurial Sector

Legislature

National, State and Local Strategic Plans

Access to credit and financial services

Human Rights Protection and Access

to Justice

Academia and think thanks

Media and public relations/

mobilisation

Micro-finance Commercial Banks

Development Partners

Property rightsLabour rights

Mainstreaming operational PlansSustained Implementation of RBA Activities

Managing STRATEGIC INFORMATION

AJP local level decentralized management

RBA Institutional Arrangements

Rights-based enquiry and situation analysis Legal strategic analysis – and

strategic plans

Rights Strategic Framework Justice, RBA, AIDS, Governance…

RBA Evaluation

Processes in mainstreaming the rights-based approach and thematic issues on legal

empowerment

Thank You BT Costantinos, PhD

School of Graduate Studies, Department of Management and Public Policy,

College of Management, Information and Economic Sciences, Addis Ababa University

[email protected]

https://sites.google.com/site/doncosty/home

PresentationLegal Empowerment Of The Poor

legal empowerment of the poor

Education

informal sector

natural resources

formal sector

enabling environment

legally empowering

civil society

practical

research enquiry