The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Executive Directors of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank or the governments they represent. The World Bank does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this work. The boundaries, colors, denominations, and other information shown on any map in this work do not imply any judgement on the part of The World Bank concerning the legal status of any territory or the endorsement or acceptance of such boundaries.

The purpose of this article is to revisit the issue of land, and explain why it is still critical to women's empowerment. This is done by looking at it from a rights-based approach and a gender and development perspective. The article draws on case studies of an NGO working on enhancing women's land rights in Nicaragua. It highlights why land continues to be central to women's empowerment, and makes some suggestions on what development organisations can do to ensure continued support.

This paper presents the Romanian Law on Security Interests in Movable Property, together with commentaries on its main articles. It also discusses the background research and analysis that preceded the enactment of the law. Problems in the legal and institutional framework for secured transactions ranked high among the factors that limited access to credit in Romania. Limited access to credit, in turn, led to lower rates of investment and, thence, to lower rates of economic growth. Moreover, since the existing credit system could safely take as collateral only large holdings of real estate, the credit system discriminated heavily against those with mainly movable property as assets—the poor and operators of small businesses and farms. These legal problems reduced access to credit in Romania more than did macroeconomic instability or a variety of other structural features of the economy. Moreover, these limits would have lingered on undiminished long after macroeconomic stability could have been achieved. Limited access to credit has been generally recognized as constraining growth and aggravating poverty. Many donors and governments have attempted to address this problem without remedying its underlying legal roots: they have supported directed credit programs, state loan guarantees, state-funded guarantee funds, and direct loans by state agencies. These efforts typically end in disaster. Even where employees of such institutions matched their private counterparts in their desire to collect loans, the legal and regulatory framework prevented collection. State lenders may be able to make loans that the private sector will not make; however, they are no more able to collect them. No one has devised a feasible and effective economic remedy to this legal problem. Good public policy relaxes limits to access to credit by addressing the legal roots of this problem. Notwithstanding the importance of collateral to lenders and of movable property to producers, before the reform, the laws and legal registries of Romania largely prevented private lenders from taking movable property as collateral for loans. The new Romanian Law on Security Interests in Personal Property remedies this problem. It sets out a comprehensive framework for using personal property as collateral for loans. It introduces a broad system of security interests in personal property that derogates the existing narrow regime of non-possessory pledges. The law broadens the range of property that can serve as collateral under the concept of security interests (Garantiile Reale) far beyond the scope of what the pre-reform pledge. Today, a wide variety of property and transactions can secure a loan. The law sets out a compulsory and unique system for establishing priority among creditors in collateral. It provides that the first creditor who files a notice of the security interest shall be the first entitled to receive the proceeds from the sale of the collateral should the borrower default. These provisions apply to any secured creditor and to any creditor who—under any contract—has a right to satisfaction from property of the debtor or from property in the debtor's possession. This includes creditors in financial leases, conditional sales, warehouse operations, and accounts receivable financing. The law provides that the ranking of priority depends only on the time of filing a notice of the security interest in an Electronic Archive. Unlike a pledge registry, this Archive system does not register the security agreement. Rather, it files in a database a notice that a security interest exists. This notice contains minimal information about the parties to the transaction and the security interest. Furthermore, the law sets out—for the first time anywhere in the world—a registry archive in the Internet that may be accessed on-line both to file and to retrieve information.

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Este artículo analiza las formas en las que se organiza el cuidado de adultos mayores paraguayos con especial foco en áreas rurales y en aquellas familias cuyos hijos han migrado a Argentina. Como insumo principal se analizan entrevistas y observaciones de un trabajo de campo binacional. Se examinan prácticas de cuidados en espacios colectivos y recursos diferenciados a los que acceden las familias transnacionales. La investigación concluye que, en contextos de aislamiento y escasos apoyos estatales, la participación en familias trasnacionales mejora las condiciones de vida de adultos mayores en Paraguay rural. Además, reflexiona en torno a la necesidad de avanzar hacia modelos conceptuales adecuados que faciliten avanzar en el desarrollo de políticas nacionales y transnacionales que garanticen responsabilidades públicas en el cuidado de adultos mayores.