Opening speech at gathering for mappping authorities

1. The background for this government’s keen interest in the agenda of Legal Empowerment, is the political will within the development agenda, where it is the rule of law that can enforce and help people all over the world to have the same opportunities in life, through legal protection. Thus, it is an inclusive agenda, and we share the high visions expressed in the agenda that our common goal is a decent life for everybody.

In our part of the world, we tend to take basic rights and access to justice for granted. Now we know that 4 billion people, according to the estimation of the Commission for Legal Empowerment of the Poor, are excluded from these rights. This very fact must be taken seriously and to make programmes of inclusion and facilitating their access to protection and opportunity must, in my opinion, be at the core of our common agenda to fight poverty globally.

2. Norway had the lead role when the Legal Empowerment agenda was launched in 2005. Now, The Final Report from the Commission is almost finished and will be launched 3 June 2008. The working group reports already state some strong interlinkages between the right-based approach and the fight against poverty. Its message includes a set of strong, clear and practical recommendations mainly aimed at the governmental level, but also practical tools and how they must be sensitive to poor people’s needs. We will be active in the follow-up of this global approach to practical tools to include poor people in formal economies in areas like property rights, labour rights, and business rights, with a specific view to indigenous people and the empowerment of women.  Our meeting today is exactly this; how the global needs, approaches and possibilities must and shall be dealt with by global approaches and new insight at the regional level, trickling down to the hands-on, demand-driven work locally. Access to and protection of property rights is at the core of this agenda.

3. In this connection, I would like to highlight major Norwegian inputs and priorities in our work with and within the Commission for Legal Empowerment of the Poor.

a. Women rights. Women as a driving force in economics have long been overseen. Norway wants economic empowerment of women to be at the centre of the Legal Empowerment agenda. Inclusion in registers of tangible and non-tangible assets of women, women’s’ rights as widows, daughters, and wives; revision of laws to make them non-discrimatory, and capacitation about rights and mechanisms sensible to women’s’ rights at the local level, are such tools.

b. Collective rights. Collective and users’ rights as a tool to access to property have until the Commission started working been long overseen in the theories about property rights internationally. Now this has changed. In the report from working group 2 on property rights, advice is given strong and clear on how collective approaches can be the door to the formalized property markets with the due protection for poor people.

c. Indigenous population rights to land and natural resources. In its nature, formal ownership as such can be far-fetched and not accessible nor desirable for indigenous people. Still, indigenous people are victims to brutal exclusion from formal economies and from legal protection. The Commission gives advice to how the governmental level must create solutions to this challenge, and making formal rights a tool for indigenous people both to act and benefit collectively and individually from the rule of law and registration systems.

4. Norway has herself a wide and long experience of a multiple and diverse system of property rights. One characteristic is the mixture of private and common land, rights and obligations as to property. The many different “layers” of property rights, with a tradition in common property, shared rights and collective rights, have indeed given access to property, protection and opportunity to most people. Thus, the rights are considered and have developed as universal rights.

In 2007, and with the intention to contribute to the global agenda, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, NORAD and the Norwegian Mapping Authority organized a conference with focus on Norwegian land tools relevant for Africa.

We tried then to share experiences like how the governmental level has focused and organizes our indigenous people, the Samis, with tailor-made solutions for commonly held property.  Another Norwegian experience that might be shared is practical registration tools, like the Immovable Property Rights Register and Cadastre information systems. The Norwegian Mapping Authority is responsible for both, and has developed cheap and accessible technical solutions makes possible sharing information in both systems.

Another characteristic in Norway, and that might be applicable and useful in this agenda, is the Cooperative housing associations. While few people can afford to buy property in cities individually, the cooperative organization gives access to a number of people that collectively share both formal rights and obligations. This might be a model that can be a contribution to our common agenda to secure access to formal law and assistance for poor people in other countries.

As you see, this agenda has been at the core of a right-based approach to legal protection in Norway. Now we will focus upon how it can be a contribution to development in the years to come. I hope this seminar will be fruitful for you all and that we can advance in the Legal Empowerment agenda together.

Good luck with the workshop!