Street Vendors and Legal Advocacy: Reflections from Ghana, India, Peru, South Africa and Thailand
This Resource Document aims to highlight the experiences of street vendors in Ghana, India, Peru, South Africa and Thailand in their struggles for decent work within five distinct national regulatory regimes, with the aim of identifying lessons for strategic advocacy to improve their working conditions. It draws primarily on research and project reports from the five countries under the Law Project, and draws lessons from research and activities subsequently undertaken by the Law Programme, particularly in Ghana and South Africa from 2016 to date.
The study finds that the principal challenge in the governance of street vending is that local by-laws and ordinances have historically failed to recognize it as a legitimate economic activity and that local-level laws and practices are often inconsistent with national constitutional rights and national and local policy commitments to protect street vendors. It finds that lawyers can play an important role in street vendors’ struggle to ensure the alignment of local government legislation and practices with the constitutional and policy provisions that support street vending and argues for a rebellious, worker-centred approach to lawyering, which embraces the reality that law cannot be separated from struggle.
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