Microfinance; Financial Inclusion and Social Responsibility

While one can observe an extension and intensification of financialization in all modern societies, including the so-called “developing countries,” access to financial services is usually not thought of as a fundamental human right.1 Yet, financial instruments play a more and more essential role, whether in the risk management of daily life, to increase one’s income or to smooth resources and expenses. But the international community has its eyes fixed mainly on the Millennium Objectives of the fight against poverty adopted by the United Nations in 2000;2 on its first indicator, the increase of per capita income; and on the associated objective of a decrease by half of the proportion of the population living on less than a dollar a day by 2015. Among all the objectives adopted, there is no comprehensive indicator of the use of financial services. Also, there is no financial indicator among the human development criteria of the United Nations Program for Development. Yet the proposed indicators are diversified and even reach beyond the strictly economic domain. There are, for example, references made to health care, education, environment, to women’s participation in public life and to housing conditions.3 Certainly, these indicators are thought too increase the productive capacities of the people. This omission of the financial dimension contrasts with the more and more intense media coverage of microfinance, from the time of the first Microcredit Summit in 1997 until the climax of the Nobel Prize awarded to Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank in 2006.