The Legal Empowerment Agenda by Dan Banik

Author:Dan Banik [Banik, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781409411208
Goodreads: 17552659
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing
Published: 2011-05-01T00:00:00+00:00

Legal Empowerment and the Informal Sector

The basic premise of legal empowerment is that laws, institutions and policies governing economic, social and political affairs deny a large part of society the chance to participate and compete on equal terms. It is estimated that about four billion people eke their livelihoods outside the purview of the formal sector world-wide. These people are poor because they lack recognised rights, they are vulnerable to abuse by authorities that discriminate, seek bribes, or take the side of power interests who may wish to prevent the poor from competing economically or seek to evict them from their land. Therefore ‘it is not the absence of assets or lack of work that holds [the poor] back, but the fact that their assets and work are insecure, unprotected, and far less productive than might be’ (ibid: 2).

The predicament of the vast majority of the working population around the world has, inter alia, prompted the International Labour Organization (ILO) to champion the ‘decent work’ agenda. The underlying idea of the decent work agenda is to promote opportunities for men and women to obtain work in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity. It is hence seen as central to efforts to reduce poverty as well as a means for achieving equitable, inclusive and sustainable development (Horn 2006 and Rodgers 2008). The main challenge is that workers in the informal sector, which hosts almost four fifth of the total global population, are not regarded as real workers as ‘no employer–employee relationship cannot be established’ (Street Net 2006: 8).

The reluctance to recognise the people who earn their livelihoods in the informal sector as workers has triggered debate on how best to deal with the informal sector in the quest to improve the conditions of work. The suggestions have ranged from formalising the informal sector to promoting collective bargaining strategies to improve the voices of the stakeholders in the sector (Horn 2006 and UNDP 2008). It is, for instance, argued that governing and regulating the informal sector generates the following advantages:

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Documentation of informal sector widens the tax-base which increases revenue for national development.

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Economic gains expand local markets and increase financial activity at all levels.

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The predatory networks that exploit vulnerable participants in the informal economy begin to unravel.

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More and more people develop a stake in the reduction of crime and maintenance of a peaceful social order.

The track record of these initiatives is, however, less impressive. Street vendors are often relocated to confined spaces where they endure quite high levies but without corresponding infrastructure or services from city or municipal authorities. The process of governing and regulating the informal sector usually fails to respect the human rights of vendors to earn a living especially since this is often done without policy guidelines in place. These initiatives are, in most cases, carried out under the cloak of street beautification, street restoration and development. The experiences of Zambia, Ghana, South Africa and Mozambique show that vendors are ‘often dumped in isolated areas without any facilities and [with quite limited space for potential growth of enterprises]’ (Street Net 2006: 8).

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