Consumer Protection Services: Empowering the Poor in Microfinance

Microfinance is supposed to help reduce poverty and “put poverty in museums”, as Grameen Banks founder and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus once stated. Therefore, it is strange that in the Millennium Development Goals, the United Nations only mentions loans to the poor for halving poverty by the year 2015. Will the failure to achieve that result lead to real accountability for the UN, donors and governments of countries with massive poverty? This article highlights the importance of consumer protection in the microfinance mission.