Poverty is on the retreat. Despite the global economic downturn, the World Bank and UN reported this year that the number of people living in extreme poverty has dropped in every region of the world for the first time since record keeping began. Though progress on the UN’s Millennium Development Goals has been uneven, we should be heartened that we have already reached the first of these eight goals – that of halving the number of people still living on less than $1 a day. However, we risk allowing these gains to come undone if we fail to strengthen the rule of law in developing countries.

While poverty was, correctly, a focus of the first set of MDGs, we have overlooked its twin soul, injustice. An estimated 4bn people live outside the protection of the law, mostly because they are poor. We urge the UN to adopt a new set of development goals: a set of MDG 2.0 milestones, this time with due attention placed on legal empowerment of the poor, human rights and statelessness. Just as the first set of MDGs used a checklist of indicators, such as halving extreme poverty and achieving universal primary education, the MDG 2.0 targets should tackle, among other issues, the obstacles to full legal empowerment.

Without basic legal empowerment, the poor live an uncertain existence, in fear of deprivation, displacement and dispossession. A juvenile is wrongfully detained and loses time in school; village land is damaged by a mining company without compensation; an illiterate widow is denied the inheritance she is entitled to and is forced on to the streets with her children. By what means can individuals and communities protect their rights in daily life?