Although the priority theme of the 52^nd Commission for Social Development revolved around “promoting empowerment,” there was remarkably little discussion of how people actually come to be empowered.

Given that empowerment means many things to many people, I should perhaps clarify at the outset my understanding of this multi-faceted term. I understand individual and collective empowerment to be the expansion of vision, capacity and volition necessary for people to act as effective agents of human well-being and prosperity. 

While the Commission for Social Development dedicated much time to discussions of the social protection floor, the provision of empowerment, and the like, the means by which human beings, individually and collectively, acquire the vision, capacity and the will to be protagonists of development was rarely discussed.

Instead, empowerment was treated much like the “black box” spoken of by engineers and designers – a process in which given inputs yield consistent outputs, with no knowledge or understanding of the system’s internal workings needed. If “enabling conditions” could be established, discussions at the Commission seemed to suggest, empowerment would follow as a matter of course. Inputs and starting conditions were the critical factors; if those were gotten right, everything else would simply work itself out. 

I wonder, however, to what extent this is true. Certainly, enabling conditions such as effective institutions, broad-based participation, social and economic equity — which address institutionalized structures of injustice and exclusion — are conducive to empowerment.  Less clear, however, is whether those conditions are sufficient, by themselves, to achieve these ends. Neither do they seem to be a strict prerequisite of empowerment, as is sometimes suggested.

Were this true, far-reaching enabling conditions would have to be instituted before empowerment could be said to have occurred. It would, by definition, be impossible until ambitious social goals such as the provision of universal health care or the reduction of extreme poverty had been achieved.

While few would disagree that enabling conditions are linked with empowerment, we must also ask how and by what means these conditions can be achieved in the first place. Some aspects of the process of social transformation might well be established by the stroke of a pen in a far-off capital. But many others, I believe, require the active involvement of the communities directly affected.

Empowering increasing numbers of individuals to labor more and more effectively for the advancement of the common good is critical to achieving beneficial social goals at the start. In this light, the enabling conditions mentioned so often by so many seem as much an effect of empowerment as a cause of it.

Here, then, I believe is an important insight into the heart of the black box: namely, that a critical outcome of true empowerment is further empowerment.  If it is true that transformative progress cannot be sustained by “outsiders” alone – no matter how resourceful and committed they might be – then empowerment cannot consist only of increasing individuals’ capacity to pursue their own interests and well-being. If it is to support and indeed accelerate social advancement, empowerment must be consciously and intentionally other-focused. Capacity must be built in ways that increase in others the ability to contribute to progress.

None of this is to deny that masses of humanity are today disadvantaged and marginalized, nor that empowerment will, in many cases, need to be supported for a time by assistance from outside a population itself.  Nor does it undermine in any way the pivotal role of responsible governance and the work of development agencies. 

I’m suggesting that in order for conditions of disadvantage and marginalization to be addressed in real and lasting ways, the work involved will need to be increasingly sustained by individuals indigenous to the affected neighborhoods, villages, provinces, or nations themselves.

Traditional distinctions between “donors” and “beneficiaries,” between “givers” and “receivers” of empowerment are, in this orientation, considerably blurred.

Indeed, the distinction between “empowered” and “disempowered” itself becomes far less meaningful when those seen to be in need of empowerment are also understood to be the primary resources by which that empowerment will take place.

— by Ming Hwee Chong, Representative of Baha’i International Community to the United Nations