Law, Justice and Development Week 2012: Opportunity, Inclusion and Equity

Transcription

1 CONCEPT NOTE

2 Law, Justice and Development Week 2012: Opportunity, Inclusion and Equity Introduction 1. Law, Justice and Development (LJD) Week 2012 will explore the potentially transformative role of effective law and legal institutions in providing people with more opportunity that is both inclusive of underserved populations and equitable. 2. To explore this theme, LJD Week 2012 will bring together World Bank Group staff, senior officials from other international financial institutions, international development practitioners, government officials, lawyers, judges, scholars and representatives from civil society. LJD Week 2012 is a World Bank Group-wide event coorganized by the World Bank s Legal Vice Presidency, International Finance Corporation and Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency Legal Departments, and the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes. In addition, the formal launch of the Global Forum on Law, Justice and Development and dedicated sessions led by its Thematic Working Groups will take place during the week. Opportunity, Inclusion and Equity: Responding to the Challenges of Our Time 3. In a world that is increasingly interconnected and risky, the quest for opportunity by individuals and organizations shines a new spotlight on the potentially transformative role that effective law can play in accelerating and sustaining growth, as well as in ensuring that growth can be both inclusive of underserved populations and equitable across society. 4. Countries around the world continue to struggle with an economic downturn that threatens contagion from Europe across borders. Countries with developing economies across Africa, Latin American and the Caribbean, the Middle East, East Asia and South Asia grapple with how to jump-start or sustain growth, knowing that they face unmet demand for jobs for an increasing population. New ways to examine the impact of law on national economic development explore how changes in private laws, in a variety forms across many different countries, can bring together ideas and capital to create opportunities for accelerated and sustained growth Social and political changes, prompted by a range of financial crises, food shocks, health crises and natural disasters around the world make clear the potential impact of people s consistent demand for access, reach and quality of opportunity and services. Increasing connectivity and use of social media feed a growing demand for open, accountable and equitable governance. As experience from several Arab countries demonstrates, legal systems that do not address exclusion and inequity and that do not provide access to effective judicial institutions can create intense pressure for change. The need for strong judicial and legal institutions and access to the same link the three dimensions of LJD Week New ways to assess the impact of insufficient access to effective justice on people s lives examine why despite recent changes, poverty, exclusion and inequity persist in all regions. 6. Collectively across disciplines, the World Bank Group and the larger development community is tackling these challenges. The World Development Report 2013 looks at jobs as the hinge connecting productivity, living 1 See, for example, the analysis of law as the solution to a trust dilemma among unrelated parties by Robert D. Cooter and Hans-Bernd Schäfer, Solomon s Knot: How Law Can End the Poverty of Nations, pages 27;228 (Princeton University Press: 2012).

3 standards and social cohesion. 2 The World Bank s Social Protection and Labor Strategy examines the challenges of resilience, equity and opportunity. 3 The Financial and Private Sector Development Network investigates the interplay of stability, jobs and competitiveness, and inclusion Advancing this debate, LJD Week 2012 shifts the focus to law, legal frameworks and judicial and legal institutions. Law, legal frameworks and judicial and legal institutions can create opportunity by providing the space to build human capital and assets, create jobs, and free individuals and organizations to make productive investments based on a greater sense of stability. They can also promote inclusion by advancing access to jobs, and expanding the reach and quality of services, including access to justice, for underserved populations, and equity by supporting equality of opportunity and promoting open and accountable governance and effective judicial and legal institutions. Almost everyone benefits from growth, but 8. Recognizing that equity, and particularly the receipt of justice, is a good that in and of itself has a real impact on how people live 5, equity also provides the transversal theme, linking together events throughout LJD Week some lose relative to others and a few lose absolutely.the loser s dilemma in economic growth is a trust problem that law can ameliorate. from Solomon s Knot: How Law Can End the Poverty of Nations (note 1) 9. The impact of law and justice on the development agenda is also the rationale for the Global Forum on Law, Justice and Development (GFLJD). The GFLJD is a permanent forum that provides an innovative and dynamic framework for the exchange of knowledge, connecting developing countries, think-tanks, regional and international organizations, international financial institutions, governments, judiciaries, the private sector and civil society organizations with relevant research and practice. It will comprise a coherent, sustained program of collaborative research and special pilot projects to accelerate legal knowledge co-generation, dissemination and use, including building human capacity. It will promote a multidisciplinary approach, combining economic, legal, and technical aspects of targeted issues. Structure of LJD Week 2012 Events LJD Week 2012 will be held December 10 14, 2012 at the World Bank headquarters in Washington, DC. Thematic Sessions: Each session will have a clear link to one or more of the three dimensions of opportunity, inclusion and equity, or to the creative tension that exists among them. Sessions focusing on opportunity and equity will include: - exploring the links between gender and jobs growth; Justice is ultimately connected with the way people s lives go, and not merely with the nature of the institutions surrounding them. from The Idea of Justice (note 5) 2 See World Bank, Jobs - World Development Report See World Bank, Resilience, Equity and Opportunity, The World Bank s Social Protection and Labor Strategy , page 1 (April 2012). 4 See World Bank, Network Update 2012, Finance and Private Sector Development (FPD) Global Practices: Stability, Jobs and Competitiveness, page 6 (March 15, 2012). 5 Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice pages x; 18 (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press: 2009).

4 - ensuring the foundations of equitable and effective access to infrastructure; - the law of cities; - extractive industries and governance; - the treatment of the insolvency of natural persons; - international organizations and the development of the law of secured transactions; - Islamic finance; - innovative structures and products; and - restructuring and resolution of external sovereign debt. Sessions concentrating on inclusion and equity will address: - responding to social movements and citizen demand through justice institutions; - empowerment and equity for diverse communities; - health law and rights; - linking national, regional and global agendas in economic development; - governance of natural resources and legal measures for the green economy; - legal implications of the information revolution and development; and - empirical approaches to justice reform. In addition, sessions related to how international organizations work together on the themes of opportunity, inclusion and equity will include: - coordinated governance; - emergence of new states and issues around failed states; - how to deal with de facto governments; - creating credible, effective and fair debarment systems to combat fraud and corruption; - lessons learned from constitutional reform; - issues and trends relating to state attribution; and - capitalizing on the political consensus arising from the UN General Assembly s high-level meeting on the Rule of Law. India Day: Each year, LJD Week takes a deep look at legal developments in one country. The past two years have focused on Brazil and China. This year, members of the judiciary, policy-makers and academics from India will join LJD Week to offer a full day of programs including: the Indian Judiciary s contribution to development and the rule of law; strengthening formal and informal mechanisms for access to justice; the role of the private sector in development and the rule of law in India; India s experience with the right to information and its impact on development and social inclusion; and advancing development through social and economic rights recent legislative initiatives. General Counsel s Roundtable: The annual General Counsel s Roundtable will bring together the leaders of the legal departments of international financial institutions in a question-and-answer format to share how their respective organizations approach managing legal risks in a complex world. Global Forum on Law, Justice and Development: Partners of the GFLJD participating to the LJDWeek will have the opportunity to meet in person and look at the work done in the past year and the way forward. Co-leaders of Thematic Working Groups and coordinators of Communities of Practice will lead the LJD week sessions described above related to their respective work programs. In addition, LJD week will host a special session on the GFLJD progress and way forward.

5 Special Practitioner Sessions: Special practitioner sessions of the GFLJD and the Insolvency Task Force will provide experts in their fields with a concentrated opportunity to share experiences. Special Cultural and Social Opportunities. LJD Week will also feature several luncheon and evening opportunities for informal exchange and knowledge sharing. The Law, Justice and Development lunch series will feature as keynote speaker the Honorable Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines. The George Washington University will host an evening opportunity for participants to interact on an informal basis. The American Bar Association will host a reception on Tuesday evening; the Bank s Art Curator will award the winners of the photography contest highlighting the LJD week themes through: Investing on Women and Girls. Participating institutions will have a luncheon opportunity to highlight flagship knowledge products and publications. Full Session Descriptions Full descriptions of all sessions are set out in the following pages. All materials for the sessions are available at The same website will later on include the recorded sessions and any material We look forward to a rich and exciting exchange of ideas with all participants during LJD Week 2012.