About LEP

Created in December 2008, LEP is a strategic initiative for cross-faculty collaboration on Legal Empowerment of the Poor (LEP). The initiative is coordinated by LUCSUS (Centre for Sustainability Studies. Other participants include: Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences; Department of Business Law, School of Economics; Division for Sociology of Law, Faculty of Social Sciences; Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities; and Division of Social Medicine and Global Health, Faculty of Medicine.

The initiative aims at contributing to the establishment of a solid and broad foundation for research and education across these involved faculties at Lund University on the issue of legal empowerment of the poor. As a starting point, the initiative will build on four crucial pillars, proposed by the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor (CLEP) and essential for providing the poor with protection and opportunities for getting out of poverty:

  • Access to justice and the rule of law;
  • Property rights;
  • Labour rights; and
  • Business rights.

Besides these four pillars, the initiative also seeks to expand the scope of legal empowerment and will therefore advocate an inter-disciplinary approach to Human rights. This is chiefly done by integrating two dimensions into the pillars:

  • the relationship between the national and the international; and
  • the relationship between society and the environment.

Currently, three research projects are conducted within the LEP framework: Environmental Justice (relationship between society and environment), Child Rights (access to justice and the rule of law; and the relationship between national and international) and property rights. For more information on these projects see
Research projects »  More projects are in the pipeline.

The initiative will further provide some financial support for young researchers, primarily, Masters students or PhD candidates, to be used for field work conducted in relation to research relevant for LEP, primarily in conjunction with Masters or PhD theses. More information on the financial support for fieldwork see News »

For more information about the Lund University initiative please refer to the LEP research plan (pdf file) »