- Formalisation of property rights is one way out of poverty, but not the only one, and it is not a ”one-size-fits-all” solution.
26/07/2006 :: In January 2006 the High Level Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor held its first meeting. The Commission will produce and disseminate a comprehensive set of practical, adaptable tools that will assist policymakers in their reform efforts at the country level. The Norwegian government has been a key player in setting up this commission, Erik Solheim, the Norwegian Minister of International Development states in the introduction of the anthology “Legal Empowerment - a way out of poverty”, published June 2006.
- In Pakistan the challenge of access to legal property was highly actualized by the earthquake in Pakistan in October 2005. In the affected areas, a number of people lost houses which had been theirs for decades, and it is now important to secure people’s safety for housing and work, states Alf Arne Ramslien, Chargé d’ Affaires a.i. at the Norwegian Embassy in Pakistan.
The Pakistani in the Commission is S. Tanwir H. Naqvi, former founding Chairman of the National Reconstruction Bureau of Pakistan. As a consequence of the wide-ranging and far reaching reforms of the country’s governance structures and systems he had conceived and led as part of general Musharraf’s government in the period 2000-2002, Tanwir Naqvi was invited by the Norwegian Prime Minister in 2005 to join the Commission in his individual
capacity. Mr. Naqvi says that in Pakistan, as in most developing countries, there is a very large informal sector, and a very large number of the poor lack legal rights to properties and businesses.
- I believe that the adaptable tools that the Commission expects to create for the legal empowerment of the poor and for providing them easy and affordable access to justice, will, if adopted by the government, help Pakistan achieve the Millennium Development Goal of reducing poverty by 50% by the year 2115, Mr Naqvi states.
Mr Naqvi will attend the regional consultation for South Asia in December 2006 in New Delhi (India), where the Commissioners from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh will brainstorm the reality of the informal sector in their respective countries, and develop recommendations to address the consequent problems for adoption by the Commission’s Working Groups working in New York. This will be preceded by National Consultative Processes organised by them during this year in their respective countries.
More about the Commission for Legal Empowerment of the Poor:
http://www.undp.org/legalempowerment/
http://www.undp.org/
http://www.ild.org.pe/
http://www.statkart.no/IPS/?module=Articles
Embassy of Norway