Justice and Legal Empowerment for Sustainable Development

Monday, June 16, 2014 - 20:00
PeaceWomen Consolidated Themes: 
Participation
Human Rights
Location: 
North Lawn Building - Conference Room 7, United Nations Headquarters


JUSTICE AND LEGAL EMPOWERMENT FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Tuesday, June 17, 2014
North Lawn Building – Conference Room 7
13:150 – 14:30 pm

UNDP's Bureau for Policy and Programme Support, in cooperation with the Mission of Denmark to the United Nations, is pleased to host an event on Justice and Legal Empowerment for Sustainable Development. The panel discussion will take place on 17 June from 1:15-2:30 at the North Lawn Building, Conference Room 7.

The event will launch three UNDP publications which help capture evidence on the importance of access to justice and legal empowerment to sustainable development. Based on research and comparative analysis, these publications explore the trends and impact of justice and legal empowerment strategies on development, particularly from the perspective of grassroots experiences of the poor, women and excluded groups. This body of work reinforces, as reflected in UNDP's Strategic Plan (2014-2017), the imperative for legal and justice strategies which address exclusion and inequality in the context of social, economic and environmental policies that facilitate sustainable development. They are:

Ø Legal Empowerment Strategies at Work: Lessons in Inclusion from Country Experiences

Ø Environmental Justice for the Poor: Comparative Experiences in Legal Empowerment

Ø Engendering Access to Justice – Grassroots Women's Approaches to Securing Land Rights


The panel will be chaired by Magdy Martínez-Solimán, Director a.i, UNDP's Bureau for Policy and Programming Support, with opening remarks by Ib Petersen, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Denmark to the United Nations. The speakers are Justice Willy Mutunga, Chief Justice of Kenya and President of the Supreme Court of Kenya, Naresh Singh, former Executive Director of the Commission of Legal Empowerment of the Poor, and Esther Mwaura - Muiru, National Coordinator of GROOTS Kenya and member of Huairou Commission and Kishan Khoday, Practice Leader of Environment and Energy for the Arab Region, UNDP.