The Huairou Commission has seized the opportunity to partner with the Commission on the Legal Empowerment of the Poor to include the voices of the poor directly in their global consultation and legal reformation process. The Huairou Commission believes that Legal Empowerment offers an important opportunity for the grassroots women of its networks to contribute their recommendations alongside other kinds of academics and experts.

GROOTS Kenya, Uganda Community-Based Association for Child Welfare (UCOBAC) and Urban Poor Consortium in Indonesia are carrying out grassroots consultations in order to bring the recommendations and input of grassroots women to process. (See below for more details).

The Commission on the Legal Empowerment of the Poor aims to make the link between poverty and the inability of the poor to access acceptable, legal structures to protect economic assets and support economic activities. Its work will contribute to achieving the Millennium Development Goals by influencing policy at national and international levels.

Legal Empowerment will hold a broad consultation process in several regions of the world that will lead to consciousness-raising and national legal reforms around four themes: Property Rights, Labor Rights, Business Enterprise and the Justice System. Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto co-chair Legal Empowerment. Legal Empowerment is comprised of members, many of whom are former heads of state and senior policy interns. Legal Empowerment also has formed an Advisory Board on which the Chair of the Secretariat of the Huairou Commission, Jan Peterson is a member. The Advisory Board includes a wide range of actors including Sheela Patel, Anna Tibaijuka and Paul Wolfowitz.

Grassroots Consultations

Meaningful participation of grassroots women in setting agendas for the Commission require preparatory processes that enable grassroots women to collectively determine their priorities, identify barriers to their development work and frame recommendations. In order to support grassroots women to participate meaningfully in the activities of Legal Empowerment, the Huairou Commission will carry out Grassroots Consultations or Grassroots Academies as preparatory events for the official consultations.

Each of the grassroots consultations being organized and led by members and partners of the Huairou Commission will bring together grassroots women to discuss the four themes of Legal Empowerment: Property Rights, Labor Rights, Business Enterprise and the Justice System. Each will produce an outcome document that will be fed into the broader national consultation describing the women's perspective and recommendations from their on-the-ground reality regarding specific legal issues.

Indonesia
The Urban Poor Consortium, a member of the Habitat International Coalition, which has been involved in the Huairou Commission's Disaster Campaign is coordinating the grassroots input for Legal Empowerment in Indonesia. UPC will convene 20 - 30 grassroots women from various sectors for a grassroots consultation on the four themes of Legal Empowerment: Property Rights, Labor Rights, Business Enterprise and the Justice System. Participants will come from the following sectors: urban poor, labour, domestic workers, peasant/farmers and small business entrepreneurs. In this initial consultation, the women will critically analyze the law on the issues and formulate recommendations.

Urban Poor Consortium will also send representatives to present the outcome document in the Focus Group Discussions as well as the National Consultation. Additionally, they are participating in the Steering Committee for the consultations, which will place Urban Poor Consortium strategically so that they can streamline the process of grassroots consultations with the consultation hosted by Legal Empowerment.

Urban Poor Consortium will hold a second grassroots women' consultation on November 22 and 23rd, to reflect on the Focus Group Discussions and prepare for their strategic participation in the National Consultation.

Kenya
GROOTS Kenya, a member of GROOTS International and a coordinating member of the Huairou Commission's AIDS, Governance and Land Campaigns, will carry out ten grassroots consultations of about 30 people for one day each. The dialogues took place from the 5th -20th of October 2006 in 10 selected communities across the country.

GROOTS Kenya will then send representatives to present the outcome document from those consultations in the Focus Group Discussions as well as the National Consultation. On November 26, members of GROOTS Kenya participated in a Focus Group Discussion with Legal Empowerment Co-Chair Madeleine Albright.

In addition GROOTS Kenya proposes to bring 20 community and 15 development institutions representatives to a two days meeting 26th and 27th October to synthesize the dialogues, lived and working experiences and articulate three to five recommendations on each of the four themes to be presented at the Focus Group Discussions on 30th October 2006 and at the National Conference on 27th and 28th November.

Download GROOTS Kenya's Grassroots Academy Report Here!

Uganda
UCOBAC, a member of GROOTS International and the Huairou Commission AIDS Campaign will carry out a Grassroots Academy on the 13th - 17th of November, 2006. Participants are expected to report on Sunday 12th so that work takes off on Monday 13th. Thirty-five women from grassroots groups associated with UCOBAC, and from Action for Hope will participate in the process. The discussions will raise policy recommendations on each theme and each theme has been allocated a day so as to fully exhaust it. Two lawyers have been invited to guide the discussions together with the staff of UCOBAC.

The consultation will be recorded on video and a video documentary of seven - ten minutes will be produced from the Academy, which will then be presented during the National Consultation. The video aims to show the audience that the process of developing the recommendations involved a group of grassroots women and required grassroots methodologies to achieve the outcome of the recommendations.

UCOBAC recently reported that "We just concluded the national consultative conference on legal empowerment of the poor last Saturday. UCOBAC was represented by 5 members including 2 grassroots women - Florence Enyogu and Monica Olweny (who also represented the 35 grassroots women from 7 districts who participated in the grassroots academy), and 3 secretariat staff including Solome, Alice and Frances Birungi who organised and directed the grassroots academy. We also managed to get space during the conference to present all our issues and recommendations drawn from the grassroots academy and these were presented by Monica and Florence. Conference participants and organisers were impressed by the fact that grassroots women were able to speak out their issues and recommendations during the conference sessions."

Download the recommendations from UCOBAC's Grassroots Academy Here!

Other Grassroots Involvement

Tanzania
The Maasai Women Development Organization (MWEDO) has been participating in the Property Rights Working Group Consultation of the Commission for the Legal Empowerment of the Poor, a global policy initiative that seeks to enhance the legal protection and economic opportunity of the poor. The consultation mobilized members of marginalized poor pastoral communities to address the local views and concerns on the legal, cultural, and other socio-economic challenges that they encounter in their efforts towards development and in fighting poverty. Thirty representatives from the Arusha, Monduli and Longido districts communities participated in in-depth focus group discussions. The consultations specifically addressed the pastoral communities' relation to the ongoing Property and Business Formalization Program (PBFP).

Check back as this process unfolds for recommendations and outcome documents from these national grassroots consultations and workshops.

For more information on Legal Empowerment visit: legalempowerment.undp.org

For more information on the Huairou Commission's participation in Legal Empowerment, write to Dahlia Goldenberg: Dahlia.Goldenberg@Huairou.org