ABSTRACT
According to development policy-makers, accessible and transparent property rights are a key to linking the poor and marginalised in society with market opportunities and democratic governance, an argument recently sharpened by Hernando de Soto’s The Mystery of Capital and the Habitat Global Campaign for Secure Tenure. This book has been testing these linkages through interviews in periurban settlements of three countries of Africa and the Caribbean, examining whether legal and institutional reforms can help the poor to ‘leverage their property into improved, sustainable livelihoods’ (USAID 2002).
