James5

Today is Blog Action Day 2008, one day of the year where blogs all over the internet, all post on the same topic to raise awareness about an issue. This year the topic is poverty.

The law, and international law, can seem slightly distant from the ‘front line’, ‘real world’ of poverty alleviation. Lawyers aren’t as required ‘in the field’, as much as professions like medical personnel, development workers and aid workers are. So it can sometimes be difficult to remember how the law can help reduce poverty or the situation of those in poverty.

Though mostly aspirational, I think there are at least two ways law can be used to help the poor.

First, the law can empower the poor, providing them with enforceable rights to use against oppressors or to increase their bargaining power with powerful nations. Law can replace political, military or economic power as a negotiating tool in international relations. For example, international trade law has arguably empowered poorer nations when dealing with their more powerful counterparts, enabling them to demand fairer trade deals and, at the WTO, reject trade deals they don’t see as meeting their expectations. These rights can then be realised in the independent forum of the WTO Dispute Settlement Body, that avoids the political power plays of traditional international relations and can enforce the rights of all countries.

Of course, just as domestically, this hypothetical empowerment is subject to many limitations. The massive difference in resources available to countries during negotiations is a major impediment to less powerful nations pursuing good trade deals, and this is again reflected in dispute settlement, though to a lesser degree.

Second, law can restrict the powerful, forcing them to consider the impact of their actions on those in poverty and stopping them from compounding the situation of the worse off. This can be seen as the flip side to the above. Powerful nations are limited in their ability to, for example, damage the environment or fund conflicts, by international agreements. An example of this could by the recent Kyoto Protocol, where countries agreed to limit their output of greenhouse gases, restricting both rich and poor nations.

Once again, the actual outcome of these restrictions is dependent on the powerful nations signing up to and abiding by these agreements. As Kyoto shows, if the level of compromise is too high then the agreements can often be slightly ineffective.

Ultimately though, international law has massive potential to impact on the lives of the world’s poorest. By empowering poor nations and peoples, or restricting the powerful, it can be used to lift people out of poverty or stop the powerful from oppressing the poor.

As individuals, we can also use international law to help the poor by advocating to our governments to negotiate and use international law not only in the national/economic/selfish interest, but to also consider the impact agreements have on global poverty and the poor.

Though lawyers aren’t always on the front line of poverty alleviation, we still have an important role to play in developing the structures that countries and individuals work in. So though indirect, I believe the law has a central role to play in realising a world without poverty.

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