Identity, Assets and Empowerment of the Poor: Comments on UNDP Report Released Today
Blog Post
June 3, 2008
I want to flag today's global launch of the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor's timely and important report, "Making the Law Work for Everyone." Co-chairs Madeleine Albright and Hernando de Soto briefly discussed the Commission's findings and this report this morning at a press conference at the United Nations as well as in their recent Time op-ed. As eloquently as they both discussed the foundations and findings of the report in a few short minutes, the full report is brilliant, powerful and well worth the read for anyone in the asset-building community.
For the asset-building field, their report eloquently provides a richer perspective on how and why wealth (among other) inequalities persist within societies. It delves deep into the persistence of poverty through lack of access to justice and such essential rights as an identity, in most countries a requisite for access to anything asset-building related - property, real estate, pensions, social transfers, micro-credit or even the most basic financial services. Essentially, the lack of identity makes this vulnerable population virtually invisible to the formal economy or society, which in turn denies them basic rights necessary for them to access the opportunities and protections afforded to and taken for granted by the rest of us. [slideshow]
I found their focus on the power and importance of assets and asset protection as a vital component of legal, economic and social empowerment encouraging and I certainly applaud it. My only disappointment from the asset-building perspective on their conceptualization of legal empowerment was their decision to discuss access to finance narrowly under their new term, "business rights." While they mention access to basic financial services here, they are essentially referring to the accessible provision of affordable micro-credit to micro-entrepreneurs, which is only a small piece of the financial needs (perhaps even rights?) of the poor.
Overall though, I found their conceptualization compelling, and their argument for this being both smart politics and economics persuasive. Indeed pieces of their arguments as well as their prescriptions for systemic change compliment, if not mirror, the foundations of the asset-building agenda - creating institutions, policies and markets that provide and encourage opportunities for wealth accumulation (or empowerment, more generally speaking) for all, not just the already-fortunate-few.
While I encourage everyone to read the document in the entirety, I leave you with a snippet from its executive summary: "Thus it is not the absence of assets or the lack of work that hold [the poor] back, but the fact that the assets and work are insecure, unprotected, and far less productive that they might be....In too many countries, the laws institutions, and policies governing economic, social and political affairs deny a large part of the society the chance to participate on equal terms. The rules of the game are unfair."
Indeed.