Conference: International Symposium on Legal Empowerment of the Poor by O.P. Jindal Global University [October 25 – 26; Hybrid]: Submit Abstracts by May 30.

About the Centre for Legal Empowerment of Poor

CLEP is a joint initiative of Jindal School of Government and Public Policy (JSGP) and Jindal Global Law School (JGLS). This partnership is essential to achieve this synergy between policy and law in designing various interventions to explore theoretical and practical questions related to the LEP.

CLEP’s objective is to foster research, teaching, and practice of legal empowerment of the poor. CLEP is co-directed by Professor Naresh Singh, Professor and Executive Dean of JSGP and Professor Ajay Pandey, Professor, JGLS.

International Symposium on Legal Empowerment of the Poor

Poverty remains a persistent challenge in numerous countries, impacting significant proportions of their populations. Poverty reduction has been the goal for not only national governments, but also for international, multilateral, and regional organizations.

Governments and international organizations implemented a variety of poverty reduction strategies, and, in some selected country contexts, they have been successful.

There has been agreement at the global level that poverty manifests itself multidimensionally, and it does not mean lack of income and wealth only. Poverty, as lack of choices and opportunities in life, is an important dimension that influences all other dimensions of poverty, such as access to health and education. Self-empowerment of an individual is necessary for them to be able to exercise choices and access opportunities.

Law has been used as a strategy for poverty eradication, but the approaches have always been top-down where people were treated as beneficiaries, giving little scope to improve their agency and choice. Moreover, the focus of these strategies was legal institutions and lawyers rather than people. Furthermore, another limitation to these strategies was that these were implemented in selected countries’ contexts only.

Legal empowerment of the poor presented a viable alternative in the 2000s when it came to the forefront for the first time. Empowerment has been a buzzword in academia and nonprofit sector over the last few decades. However, legal empowerment of the poor has not received much attention.

The very first Sustainable Development Goal aspires to end poverty in all its form everywhere. CLEP believes that legal empowerment of the poor holds the key to achieve this goal. In the legal self-empowerment of the poor, external actors build the capacity of poor communities to take action in the areas of access to justice and the rule of law, and property, labour and business rights. Prerequisites such as legal identity, voice, information, and awareness support the process.

To initiate a discussion amongst various stakeholders on the above stated aspects and to explore and strengthen ideas for legal empowerment of the poor, CLEP is organising a symposium at O.P. Jindal Global University on 25th & 26th of October 2024.

Presentations and panel discussions will be organised at the Symposium, and the presented papers will be published in the Jindal Global Law Review, subject to successful outcome of the peer review process.

Themes

Sustainable Livelihoods
Access to Justice and Rule of Law
Inclusive property rights
Labour Rights
Business Rights

Sub themes

Attainment of legal empowerment, role of judges/ activists/ students in legal empowerment, community mobilisation, need to expand the definition of legal person, necessity to promote inclusive financial services, role of politics in legal empowerment, role of ‘identity’ &’voice’ in empowerment, and legal & policy reform necessary for bringing the imperative change.

Submission Categories

Article – 8,000 and 10,000 words.
Short Essay – 5,000 and 6,000 words
Case Study/ field notes (relating to legal empowerment work) – 2,000 and 3,000 words.
Photo Essay/ Reviews of books – 1,500 and 2,500 words.

Important Dates

Deadline for submission of Abstract: 30th of May 2024 [acceptance of abstract by 25^th of June, 2024]
Full papers due on: 25th of August 2024
Symposium: 25th & 26th of October 2024 [Hybrid]