Legal Empowerment in Informal Settlements

Grassroots Experiences in the Global South

Adrian Di Giovanni, Luciana Bercovich

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781040343364
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Civil Rights in Law
• Index: Law

This book investigates grassroots, community-led justice strategies – known as legal empowerment – being used to promote the human rights of people living in informal settlements in the Global South.

Residents of informal settlements, also known as slums or favelas, encounter a complex array of human rights violations; from systemic discrimination by public officials, to threats to physical security from forced evictions, or arbitrary arrests, to a lack of access to basic services such as housing, water, sanitation, and education. This book shows how grassroots justice organizations around the world are working with residents to defend their rights and secure more dignified living conditions. Drawing on original empirical research across 10 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the book demonstrates how legal empowerment can put residents at the centre of holistic approaches to urban development and confront exclusionary and undemocratic systems of governance. The book encompasses practical recommendations and strategies such as rights-based approaches to informality, participation, community mobilization and litigation.

Bridging the gaps between the law on the books and the harsh realities of informality on the ground, this book will be an important read for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers, working in realms of social and economic rights, access to justice and urban poverty and development.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Legal empowerment in informal settlements: Grassroots experiences in the Global South1
• 2. Legal empowerment approaches to gender equality in informal settlements
• 3. Active citizenship and access to justice: Embedding citizenship indicators within access-to-justice strategies in Rio’s favelas
• 4. Empowering informal settlement communities for recognition and inclusion in the urban development discourse: Lessons from Accra, Ghana
• 5. Innovating participation to expand water and sanitation access under a special planning area in Mukuru informal settlements, Nairobi
• 6. Staking a claim: A case study of women’s ongoing campaign to ensure inclusive and safe housing in Delhi
• 7. The right to the city and people’s planning in the Philippines: Policies and prospects
• 8. Past resistance, present challenges: The law’s contribution to the urban integration of Villa 31
• 9. Here to stay: Using legal strategies to claim rights in informal settlements in South Africa
• 10. And our voice opened up the pathway: Four women’s fight to provide water to their community
• 11. Winning the battle, losing the war: Land displacement and the limits of legal empowerment in urban Pakistan
• 12. Building coalitions and cases: Towards climate and housing justice in Bangladesh’s informal settlements
• Index