Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor

The Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor was an independent international organization, hosted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and established in 2005 as the “first global initiative to focus on the link between exclusion, poverty, and the law.” Drawing upon three years of research, the Commission proposed strategies for creating inclusive development initiatives that would empower those living in poverty through increased protections and rights. Its final 2008 report, Making the Law Work for Everyone, argued that as many as 4 billion people worldwide are “robbed of the chance to better their lives and climb out of poverty, because they are excluded from the rule of law”. In response, the Report proposed four “pillars” for legal empowerment of the poor (LEP), which, the Commission argued, would enable those living in poverty to become partners in, rather than passive recipients of, development programs. These four pillars are: access to justice and the rule of law, property rights, labor rights, and business rights.

Upon concluding its research and producing its final report, the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor ceased to exist as an independent organization. However, the Commission’s findings continue to be an integral part of the UNDP’s Initiative on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, and have contributed to the creation of similar LEP initiaves in organizations such as the World Bank and the Open Society Foundations.

Before legal empowerment for the poor (LEP) emerged as a conceptual tool in 2003, development scholars such as Dan Banik argued that “the relationship between law and development in the international development discourse was traditionally very narrowly focused on law, lawyers and state institutions.” The result, more often than not, was a “top-down” approach to development, in which aid initiatives often overlooked or excluded the voices of the very people they intended to help

Legal empowerment of the poor, by contrast, sought to bring these previously excluded voices into the development discussion, while at the same time working to expand the rights and protections afforded to those living in poverty. Stephen Golub, one of the founding scholars in the field, argued that legal empowerment “puts community-driven and rights-based development into effect by offering concrete mechanisms, involving but not limited to legal services, that alleviate poverty, advance the rights of the disadvantaged, and make the rule of law more of a reality for them”. Drawing upon these principles and bolstered by the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor emerged as an effort to convert theories of LEP into action.

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