Reparations and Microfinance

 

• From recipients of reparation payments to shareholders of MFIs

  Allocating reparation benefits to victims of civil rights abuses with a lasting effect on their well-being and self-help capacity is a tremendous challenge. By converting benefit payments into shares and beneficiaries into shareholders of microfinance institutions (MFIs), the former victims turn into active partners of aid and owners of sustainable local MFIs. In many countries, self-help groups and indigenous informal savings and credit associations are the only civil society institutions which have survived the breakdown of society... [weiterlesen]

 

• MF in Post-Disaster and Post-Conflict Situations

 In recent years, large numbers of developing and transitional countries experienced situations of crisis. These were caused by either political, economic or natural disasters, or total crisis, triggered by war or totalitarian oppression, in which the very structure of society was disrupted. Conflicts and disasters severely affect socio-economic institutions, public governance and the networks and social relationships of citizens, including those pertaining to the exchange or transfer of financial resources... [weiterlesen]

 

• Reparations and microfinance schemes

  Once a transitional government has taken the difficult decision to issue reparations payments, or material compensation, to victims of human rights abuse, the question then becomes one of effectiveness. How should reparations payments be designed such that they best redress the claims of justice of victims and others, and ideally, facilitate a qualitative improvement in the daily lives of victims... [weiterlesen]