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T h e r o l e o f t h e s t a t e i n emp owe r i n g p o o r a n d e x c l u d e d g r o u p s a n d i n d i v i d u a l s example violence against children, as at community and societal levels. Almost as important as what governments can do, is what they should avoid doing. In the complex, fragile construction of excluded people’s power ‘within’, ‘with’ and ‘to’, the first priority should be for governments to avoid becoming part of the problem. That means tackling official corruption, coercion and co-optation, and creating an environment in which the thousand flowers of genuine empowerment can bloom. Legal empowerment is a key weapon in the state armoury and cuts across multiple dimensions of empowerment. The UN Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor has identified three critical domains: property rights (communal as well as individual), labour rights and rights to selfemployment and business, which must be underpinned by access to justice if they are to be realised. To this we would add a crucial aspect of legal empowerment – measures to curb violence against women. The limits to state action As recent developments in North Africa, Turkey, Chile and Brazil have highlighted, states are seldom in total control. Numerous other players have significant influence on decision making and can constrain or support state action both internally (through social movements, trade unions, faith leaders, business associations, public intellectuals, political activists and opposition groups) and externally Box 2: City level Commonwealth Governance Handbook 2013/14 125 Box 1: Reproductive health Pakistan’s Lady Health Workers programme Pakistan’s Lady Health Workers programme (LHWP) provides reproductive health care to women by employing almost 100,000 women as community health workers. They provide information, basic services and access to further care. Women are now more visible and mobile within the communities where the LHWs operate. The LHWs receive training, are knowledgeable, earn their own income, and gain respect, challenging gender imbalances in the home and the community. Empowerment outcomes: • Taking a paid job increases the LHWs’ education through training and work experience, which results in increased decision-making power within the family and mobility in the community, breaking down caste, class and gender barriers • Some LHWs have become leaders in their communities because of the relationships they have had to forge across class and caste barriers. There have been shifts within the practice of Purdah in response to negotiations about the LHWs travelling around unaccompanied • Their work has spurred collective action such as resignations among a group of LHWs in one town in reaction to defamatory reports in the local press, and collective protests by LHWs against sexual harassment, including their refusal to participate in an immunisation campaign until a case had been brought against the perpetrator. The women in receipt of the health service itself benefit, particularly since women of child-bearing age are those most restricted from public exposure Source: EYBEN, R. 2011. Supporting Pathways of Women’s Empowerment: A Brief Guide for International Development Organisations. Informal waste management workers in Belo Horizonte, Brazil Building on a supportive legislative framework, the municipal government of Belo Horizonte designed a solid waste management system in the 1990s that has integrated two sets of informal worker cooperatives – catadores (waste pickers of recyclables) and carroceiros (informal collectors of debris). All non-organic recyclable waste is collected by the public authority and delivered to warehouses of the informal workers where they are processed and moved on through the recycling chain. The materials are sold to local industries and the co-operatives receive all the money from sales, which is then shared between the associates. These groups also now form part of a municipal waste and citizenship forum along with government and other civil society representatives where issues can be brought for public debate. The municipality has created an enabling environment for these informal workers in a number of ways. In 1993, it introduced an ‘Organic Law’ and related legislation that ‘included recycling, social inclusion, job creation and income generation as the four key pillars of solid waste management’. The municipality also supports informal workers through social assistance programmes. The public authority for waste management has been in operation for over three decades and operates at a high level of independence. This has attracted high levels of human capital and institutional memory that has been supportive of continued innovation. Beyond the municipality, a key reason for the effective integration and protection of these workers is the high level of organisation and social mobilisation of the waste pickers themselves and their supporting NGOs. Source: DIAS, S. M. 2011. Recycling in Belo Horizonte, Brazil – An Overview of Inclusive Programming. Women in Informal Employment Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO).


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