The Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, co-chaired by Hernando de Soto and Madeleine Albright, has just launched its final report “Making the Law Work for Everyone.” This report addresses the challenge of legal empowerment, or the process through which the poor become protected and are enabled to use the law to advance their rights and their interests, vis-à-vis the state and in the market.
The Commission has conducted 22 national consultation processes with representatives from local governments, academia, civil society, and grassroots movements during the past three years. The final report reflecting all these efforts is a fascinating and insightful document detailing how legal empowerment of the four billion excluded poor world-wide is the key to unlocking vital...
Hernando de Soto is famous for his work on reducing the size of the informal sector and paving the way for people to be part of the formal economy and to participate in a democracy. But to us at CIPE he is also known as the first person - literally - who walked through our doors when we opened back in 1984. A program with Hernando’s Institute for Liberty and Democracy in Peru was our very first project. And since that first project he remained a good friend of CIPE, a committed supporter of market reforms and democratic institutions around the world.
De Soto gained a lot of global visibility since we first met him in the 1980s - some may even say he has a celebrity status these days. He advises presidents; he is known worldwide for offering economic solutions to terrorism;...