[To read a press release on the consultation, please click here.]

As religious leaders, men and women, representing our religious communities from across the world, we convened in New York from 5-8 February 2008, under the auspices of Religions for Peace and in collaboration with the international Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor. We have met in the spirit of forging a stronger partnership among our faith communities to work for the well-being of all people and to address the role religions can play in advancing legal empowerment for the poor.

We find it unacceptable that seventy percent of the world’s population – four billion people – are currently unable to improve their livelihoods no matter how hard they work due to multiple forms of exclusion. This exclusion is a grave injustice and a violation of the sacred dignity of every human being. Indigenous communities face even greater challenges as they are often deprived of political voice and rights; poor women face a triple threat of exclusion: poverty, gender, and de facto barriers from owning property.

The shared moral and ethical values of our religious communities compel us to respond to the terrible suffering of the poor and to further the agenda for their legal empowerment.

Our communities have spiritual, moral and social assets that equip them to help translate the concept of legal empowerment into reality for poor people in ways that will honor their dignity, enable them to take control over their own destinies, and break generational cycles of poverty. Among our assets is a vast infrastructure of local churches, mosques and temples; of women’s groups and youth networks; and of social welfare institutions. Our communities reach from the grassroots to capitals, bringing together the poor and the elite. Through multi-religious cooperation, these assets can be effectively mobilized for the legal empowerment of the poor.

We welcome the Commission’s mandate to bring the critical issue of legal empowerment to the world’s attention and to place it on the global development agenda. We affirm that the poor require the basic conditions of identity, voice, information and organization to achieve legal empowerment No group has greater potential to help realize these conditions at the grass roots than our religious communities, and it is urgent to build the partnerships necessary to mobilize this potential.

We are prepared to engage as partners in the process of legal empowerment, and we call on the Commission to ensure that the following principles are integral to this agenda:

Advancing legal identity must be based on inviolable human dignity.
Each of our religious traditions holds as a fundamental tenet the dignity of every person rooted in the sacred origin of life. The exclusion of four billion people from formal legal systems violates this dignity and threatens their rights to civil—and at times—religious identity. Securing legal identity for all as equal citizens is a first and necessary step to advance the dignity and flourishing of life.

Human dignity demands equality before the law.
Our religious traditions are in agreement about the importance of equality before the law based on the equality of all human beings. We are obliged to stand with the marginalized and advocate for their equal access to justice systems. In working and living with marginalized people across the world, we know that unaffordable or difficult to understand legal systems in effect constitute a denial of justice. Achieving equality before the law will require not only extensive investment to bring the law to the people, but also educational efforts with the poor to promote ‘legal literacy’ and awareness of their rights. We acknowledge that in every society there exist multiple systems of law, and we call on the Commission to adopt an inclusive notion of what constitutes justice in order to recognize and integrate cultural, religious and traditional systems of justice.

Advancing social justice must be based on a principle of reciprocity.
Our religious traditions understand that the well-being of each person is related to the well-being of all as well as the environment. This ethics of reciprocity require us to treat all people as we would like to be treated, and sets a high standard for legal systems to ensure fairness and justice for individuals and to promote the common good. To achieve social justice, we call on the Commission to address the rights and responsibilities of all actors in the legal empowerment process on national and global levels.

Advancing economic opportunities must protect the value and dignity of work.
Our religious traditions value work and the fair enjoyment of the fruit of one’s labor as a means to overcoming poverty and achieving human satisfaction. In promoting the value of work, we must also protect the dignity of work so that individual workers are treated with respect and shielded from immoral or exploitative practices. We call upon the Commission to advance poor peoples’ identities and rights as workers as an essential part of a global social contract.

Advancing the poor’s right to property must also safeguard the common good.
Our religious traditions value the right and freedom of people to own property and manage their own land. Most poor people, especially women, are excluded from owning property. We affirm that ownership of property is an important way for people to become self-sufficient. We call on the Commission to support both individual and collective rights to property as a means to enable people to live sustainable and dignified lives. This right must be accompanied by a legal responsibility to preserve and manage our shared earth for future generations.

The world’s religious communities and indigenous spiritual traditions are uniquely placed to translate the moral imperatives of legal empowerment into concrete actions. Through multi-stakeholder partnerships they can be equipped to act. In partnership, we are ready to use our religious networks to carry out the following actions in this regard:

• Raise public awareness about legal empowerment as a way to strengthen a common global agenda for action.
• Engage in global, regional and national processes to concretely advance this agenda.
• Mobilize the strengths of our faith communities to provide legal education to the poor.
• Advocate for the reform of legal systems and laws to empower the poor.

We call upon Religions for Peace to continue to facilitate our cooperation as religious communities.

Working together, we are ready to join others in partnership to advance the legal empowerment of the poor to transform the lives of the majority of our brothers and sisters who have been denied their fundamental dignity.