This book investigates grassroots, community-led justice strategies – legal empowerment – being used to promote the human rights of people living in informal settlements. The book will interest researchers, practitioners, and policymakers, working in social and economic rights, access to justice, urban poverty and development.
This book investigates grassroots, community-led justice strategies – known as legal empowerment – being used to promote the human rights of people living in informal settlements in the Global South.
Residents of informal settlements, also known as slums or favelas, encounter a complex array of human rights violations; from systemic discrimination by public officials, to threats to physical security from forced evictions, or arbitrary arrests, to a lack of access to basic services such as housing, water, sanitation, and education. This book shows how grassroots justice organizations around the world are working with residents to defend their rights and secure more dignified living conditions. Drawing on original empirical research across 10 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the book demonstrates how legal empowerment can put residents at the centre of holistic approaches to urban development and confront exclusionary and undemocratic systems of governance. The book encompasses practical recommendations and strategies such as rights-based approaches to informality, participation, community mobilization and litigation.
Bridging the gaps between the law on the books and the harsh realities of informality on the ground, this book will be an important read for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers, working in realms of social and economic rights, access to justice and urban poverty and development.
1. Legal Empowerment in Informal Settlements: Grassroots Experiences in
the Global South
2. Legal empowerment approaches to gender equality in
informal settlements
3. Active citizenship and access to justice: Embedding
citizenship indicators within access-to-justice strategies in Rios favelas
4. Empowering informal settlement communities for recognition and inclusion
in the urban development discourse: Lessons from Accra, Ghana
5. Innovating
participation to expand water and sanitation access under a special planning
area in Mukuru informal settlements, Nairobi
6. Staking a claim: A case study
of womens ongoing campaign to ensure inclusive and safe housing in Delhi
7.
The right to the city and peoples planning in the Philippines: Policies and
prospects
8. Past resistance, present challenges: The laws contribution to
the urban integration of Villa 31, Buenos Aires
9. Here to stay: Using legal
strategies to claim rights in informal settlements in South Africa
10. And
our voice opened up the pathway: Four womens fight to provide water to their
community in Mexico
11. Winning the battle, losing the war: Land displacement
and the limits of legal empowerment in urban Pakistan
12. Building coalitions
and cases: Towards climate and housing justice in Bangladeshs informal
settlements
Adrian Di Giovanni is the Team Leader for Democratic and Inclusive Governance at Canadas International Development Research Centre (IDRC), where has worked since 2011. In his prior role at IDRC, he spearheaded a stream of research on law and development, focusing on public law, human rights and legal empowerment. Past roles have included Counsel for the Department of Justice Canadas Human Rights Law Section, and the World Banks Legal Vice-Presidency. Adrian holds an LLM in international law from New York University and a JD from the University of Toronto. He occasionally teaches at Carleton Universitys Norman Paterson School of International Affairs and has worked previously in Uganda and Tanzania. A proud dad of two boys who, on occasion, liked to sit on his lap at the computer well past their bedtimes, while he worked away on contributions to this volume.
Luciana Bercovich is a human rights lawyer and activist from Argentina; she has been working on access to justice and social rights for more than twenty years. Currently, she is leading the agenda of the Grassroots Justice Network (convened by Namati) in Latin America. Previously, she was Co-Director of ACIJ Civil Association for Equality and Justice in Argentina. She has a Law degree from Universidad de Buenos Aires, a master's degree in Urban and Regional Development from Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC), and a MS `in International Affairs and Development from the New School. She has authored books, papers, and op-eds about social rights, housing, and access to justice.
