- takes as its starting point the widely questioned and somewhat unproven ideas of Commission co-chair Hernando de Soto;
- accordingly attaches excessive importance to legal exclusion and downplays the many other legal and non-legal factors that perpetuate poverty;
- ignores prior research and experience that take broader though more modest views of legal empowerment;
- pays inadequate attention to gender;
- proposes a top-down approach to what it nevertheless claims is bottom-up development;
- implies that rational persuasion trumps political power and self-interest; and
- adopts often inconsistent assumptions and recommendations
However, Stephen does give credit to the UN, and proposes a focus on lessons learned and channel funding to locally based NGOs:
The Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor has made a considerable
contribution to the international development community by focusing attention
on concrete legal needs of impoverished populations. As such, it constitutes a fine
start for international, regional and domestic efforts to pull together a legal em-
powerment agenda...
Going forward, it is important to build on the Commission’s good start, but de-
part from its false and even counterproductive steps; the international community
should instead draw on successful country-specific legal empowerment experience
from diverse contexts. This features increased investment in civil society efforts to
make the rule of law a reality, since such initiatives have a better track record than
government-centered programs that mainly rely on elite good will. It more specifi-
cally involves enhanced long-term funding for domestic and international NGO
efforts, both in the form of legal services for the disadvantaged and by integrating
such services into broader socioeconomic development programs. The interna-
tional community should also support impact-oriented applied research and move
toward establishing a Millennium Development Goal for legal empowerment
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