Malawi Women and Land Grabbing by Husband's Family
A women's farming cooperative in the Democratic Republic of the congo: Across Africa, women grow most of the nutrient but rarely accept secure rights to land in their own names.
Photo: Panos / Giacomo Pirozzi
Felitus Kures is a widow living in Kapchorwa, northeastern Uganda. Her husband's expiry left her solely responsible for their children. To encounter their needs, she depended on the small-scale piece of state she and her husband had farmed together. But just months after his funeral, her in-laws sold her husband's land without her knowledge. "We only realized this when the buyer came to evict us," Ms. Kures explains. She was able to regain utilize of the land after she got legal help with the help of the Uganda State Brotherhood, a civil gild group that campaigns for country rights.
Ms. Kures's plight is a common one in Africa, although she was more fortunate than most other women. Many never regain access or rights to matrimonial country lost later divorce or the death of a spouse.
Experts study that women in Africa contribute lxx per cent of food production. They as well account for nearly half of all farm labour, and 80–ninety per cent of food processing, storage and transport, as well equally hoeing and weeding.
Nevertheless women ofttimes lack rights to land, notes Joan Kagwanja, a nutrient security and sustainable development officeholder at the UN Economic Committee for Africa (ECA), headquartered in Addis Ababa, Federal democratic republic of ethiopia. Land rights tend to exist held past men or kinship groups controlled by men, and women have access mainly through a male relative, usually a father or husband. Even then, women are routinely obliged to hand over the proceeds of any farm sales to a male person and take little say over how those earnings are used.
Moreover, such express access is very tenuous and can be quickly lost. I report showed that in Zambia more than one third of widows lost admission to family unit land when their husbands died. "It is this dependency on men that leaves many African women vulnerable," Ms. Ka-gwanja told Africa Renewal.
In response, activists are fighting to innovate or strengthen laws intended to requite women more secure admission to land and are combating social norms and practices that stand in their fashion. Despite many obstacles, they are making headway here and there.
AIDS impact
The spread of HIV/AIDS and the stigma associated with the disease have simply made women's land rights more precarious. Widows of men who die from the disease have often been accused of bringing the malady into the family, possibly leading to the confiscation of their land and other holding.
As a upshot, they and their children are oft forced to survive on society's margins. "They ofttimes lose access to country, and [must] become by selling food on the street," says Kaori Izumi, an HIV and rural development officeholder at the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). "They take no place to sleep. This creates problems of nutrient security."
Such women sometimes lose custody of their children, end up going into sexual practice work or become squatters. And because they are unable to provide for themselves, they become more vulnerable to violence and other abuse. FAO has documented such cases since 2001, adds Ms. Izumi, supporting work on one of the priority bug taken upwards by the UN Secretary-General's Task Force for Women, Girls and AIDS.
The quality of women's lives tin can be improved past according them more decision-making power over state, FAO has found. "In Botswana and Swaziland," Ms. Izumi told Africa Renewal, "we constitute that sexual commerce and other risky behaviour declines dramatically when women have secure assets and property rights. Land and property rights are therefore vital to sexual equality and food security."
Unfortunately, afterward decades of work, land rights campaigners and United nations agencies have scarcely improved women's land rights, notes Ms. Izumi. "Nosotros need to take stock of what we know, what has worked, didn't piece of work and why, and come upwards with a clear route map to secure women'southward land and belongings rights."
Historical legacy
Researchers with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), based in Washington, DC, notation that the marginal nature of women's country rights is an historical problem in Africa. Before colonial rule, land ownership and admission took diverse forms but were largely vested in lineages, clans and families, with male leaders exercising twenty-four hours-to-day control. Members of a particular lineage or clan would seek rights to use state from those community or family leaders.
A widow and her children in Ethiopia: Unlike most widows in Africa, she has been able to retain control over her small farm.
Photo: Panos / Jan Hammond
Except in a few communities where inheritance passed through the mother, land rights were typically merely inherited by sons. Women rarely had total rights to state. They were seen as secondary claimants, through male person relatives. Before getting married, a woman might have access to her father'southward land. Simply in many communities she lost that correct with union, on the assumption that she would and then gain access to the land of her husband or of his family. When a husband died, his country passed on to any sons they might have had or to male in-laws if there were none.
Benjamin Cousins, a researcher for IFPRI, points out that although historically women did non accept direct rights over land, they had traditional protections that ensured continued access fifty-fifty after separation, divorce or widowhood. There as well were traditional means of arbitration to which women could appeal if access to country was contested.
But the advent of colonial rule led to the introduction of Western systems of land tenure. In East and Southern Africa, the high number of white settlers encouraged the privatization and subdivision of state, held under individual freehold titles. In Westward Africa much country was left under communal forms of ownership, managed past customary leaders.
At independence, some new governments, as in Tanzania, Mozambique and Benin, proclaimed state ownership over all country. In Kenya and South Africa private ownership existed alongside lineage or clan ownership. In Nigeria, clan and lineage ownership coexisted with both state and private buying, peculiarly in urban areas.
Over the years, rapid population growth has contributed to the overuse of land and to the depletion of soils. This has made fertile country more valuable and increased competition for its control. Such pressures, together with changes in family structures and clan relations, accept eroded traditional social safeguards that ensured some admission by women to land. And then while many land disputes in Africa are even so formally governed past customary police force, notes Mr. Cousins, "many protections of women have non been accurately carried forward" into modern life. Moreover, he told Africa Renewal, today there are many situations, such as cohabitation without marriage, to which traditional norms practise non employ. Consequently, "Many women have lost access to land."
Dual systems
Many African countries today recognize both "traditional" rules of country ownership and Western-blazon statutory laws. In Nigeria, the land assumed ownership of all land subsequently independence in 1960. Although this weakened customary country tenure, traditional laws still were recognized by the government in areas of long-established clan and lineage ownership. The recognition of Islamic law in Nigeria'due south northern states complicated the situation further.
In southwestern Nigeria, notes IFPRI, confusion nearly which rules to follow enabled rich elites to collude with tribal chiefs to purchase upwards state, which formally belonged to the kinship grouping, without anyone, especially women, existence able to cease it.
Such dual systems of Western and traditional or religious constabulary take oftentimes disadvantaged women. A joint study past the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and World Depository financial institution in 2000 on gender and agronomics in Africa cited the example of Republic of kenya's Succession Act. The law stipulates that both men and women accept equal rights to inheritance. Just it as well states that if the man dies without a volition, the customary police force of his group relating to land inheritance will prevail. Since few men write wills and most Kenyan communities do not allow a woman to inherit property from her husband or begetter, the equality provisions of the Succession Human action generally do non apply. In reality, the study argues, inheritance rights for women practise non exist.
Marthe Nzabakurana, a member of a women farmers' clan in Rwanda: The authorities has passed a law giving women equal rights to those of men in inheriting land and other property, overturning traditional norms that favoured males.
Photograph: Panos / Crispin Hughes
Land titling
I solution that Western evolution experts initially promoted to overcome the shortcomings of customary law was to give land titles to individuals. Esther Mwangi, a land rights researcher at Harvard University, notes that governments in Due east and Southern Africa followed the course of land titling, in an effort to ensure that individuals had legal ability over their land. This policy was expected to assist women secure legal rights to properties that they owned or inherited.
"In the areas where I take been working, the privatization process has actually stripped women of their access," Ms. Mwangi told Africa Renewal. During titling operations, information technology was mainly men who got their names on the documents considering they were deemed to be the "household heads." Widows lucky plenty to get land were allocated the smallest lots.
The number of poly-gamous households across Africa has complicated things further. Oftentimes senior and junior wives, their children and several sets of in-laws compete for admission. "As the legal land title holder, the man can do whatever he wants with the state," explains Ms. Mwangi. "Some just sell the land without informing their wives."
State rights activists suggest that one way to requite women guaranteed access to land is to separate formal ownership of country from the ability to use it. Thus, while the land may be registered in the name of a human, he would be barred from selling it without the consent of his wife or wives or other heirs. Ghana has a "head of family accountability law" that is intended to ensure that family property cannot be sold without others being informed, giving consent or benefiting from the proceeds.
"Another alternative would exist for land to be put in the name of families or both men and women to have their names on the document," suggests Ms. Mwangi. "Where resource such as water, sanitation and grazing land have to be shared communally, and so whole communities could be identified equally owners of the land, with everyone having equal access."
Resistance to legal reform
But such ideas may be easier proposed than implemented. Starting time of all, they crave changes in the constabulary. Activists for women's land rights have tried to have laws passed in many countries, with mixed results, notes Ms. Izumi. In Uganda, where there was very active lobbying by the Uganda Land Brotherhood for both men and women to be listed in title deeds equally co-owners, the bill came to parliament repeatedly and failed each time. In office, explains Ms. Izumi, there was resistance past the private sector.
In Tanzania, where land is owned by the state but assigned on the basis of long-term leases (usually lasting 99 years), businesses argued that collective ownership would make it hard to use state as collateral for bank loans or as a source of income. "They debate that if buyers have to get consent from family members before state can be sold or utilized in a certain style, it will be very difficult. It doesn't facilitate the land marketplace," says Ms. Izumi.
That argument, Ms. Izumi notes, overlooks the fact that women often exercise not benefit from such individual country transactions or employ land as collateral. That is because they by and large exercise not control financial resources in the family and cannot afford to buy land. Even when they practice, they notwithstanding accept difficulties getting credit, because in many countries they need the consent of their husbands to apply for loans.
Where progressive laws accept passed, things do not necessarily become easier. In Mozambique, civil order groups gained a law in 1997 entitling women to secure access to land and property. "We saw the state law as a victory," Lorena Magane of the Rural Association of Mutual Support told a reporter.
But Rachael Waterhouse, an editor of a report on gender and land in Mozambique, says that while the law was fine in theory, implementation proved difficult because traditional courts, which most rural women use, still consider the human being the head of household and therefore the rightful authority over land.
Similarly, in Zimbabwe, the authorities amended the inheritance constabulary to make the surviving spouse, whether male or female, the legitimate heir. Simply, says Ms. Izumi, "lack of information means many women in rural areas are not enlightened of it."
In Ghana the 1985 Intestate Succession Constabulary and the Head of Household Accountability Police were both intended to create greater security for widows and children. If a man died without a will, the succession law decreed that his belongings would be as divided and distributed among his widow, children and other members of the extended family. Yet an FAO study in Ghana's Upper Volta Region found that few women knew of either police force and that customary practices continued to decide inheritance. This left many women without access to land after the death of their partner.
In general, acknowledges Ms. Izumi, "progressive laws in Africa suffer from lack of advisable implementation. In countries where lobbies are trying to go governments to pass progressive laws, at that place is still a lot of resistance."
Multiple avenues of alter
What women need, argues Ms. Kagwanja, is for their basic rights to exist entrenched in constitutions and for equal rights of property buying to be clearly stipulated in the law. Where this has already been done, it is necessary to bring all inheritance and land laws into harmony with the constitution, and then that they say the same affair. In addition, legal institutions responsible for implementing the state laws need to operate equitably, be friendly to women and operate not only in the cities.
"Now," she says, "we take very centralized institutions. Moreover, it is men who are in charge of the dispute-resolution systems and the court systems are very expensive and intimidating."
Traditional state ownership systems in item need some rethinking, she says. Local chiefs authorized to classify land more often than not assign it to men. "How do you lot democratize the systems for allocation of country?" Ms. Kagwanja asks. "Do you develop new localized state boards, where yous elect members of the state board and insist on a requirement for gender equity, as is the case in Tanzania and Uganda? Or do you lot democratize the old system? These are some of the questions we need to answer."
Answering such questions, suggests Ms. Izumi, requires pursuing multiple efforts simultaneously. "So much endeavor has been put into legal reform. Laws and policies are important and nosotros should keep trying to alter them and make those changes happen. However, we also need to assistance governments to ameliorate their technical and financial capacity to implement the laws."
Activists are fighting to introduce or strengthen laws intended to give women more secure access to land and are combating social norms and practices that stand in their way.
Judicial and traditional leaders also need grooming, she adds, to aid the wider community have women's rights to land. Community tribunals could and so be set up to arbitrate such bug. The most important thing, Ms. Izumi adds, is to sensitize women "on their ain rights, and what they could do or where they could become to go help."
Combating negative norms
Broader cultural change is also vital, says Ms. Mwangi. Those who decide land allocations accept particular cultural understandings of the part of women in society. So wider gender disparities in economic and political power also need to be addressed.
She spent some time talking to men and women almost sharing country ownership. "I think that the men are non gear up," observes Ms. Mwangi. "They don't seem very sensitized to the thought that women can be conclusion-makers when it pertains to state." That is a paradox, she adds. "Women's labour is key to productivity, however that land is literally out of attain for women. Males do non seem to run across a problem with this."
Mr. Cousins agrees. "To address land rights, you need to accost the unequal power relations inside families. Unless yous change the power relations, the legal definition of who has rights may not make much of a difference," he told Africa Renewal.
"We have seen a lot of resistance," says Ms. Izumi. "These norms are very deep. Gender relations are the most difficult social relations to change."
Positive developments
But there are some positive achievements. In Swaziland, women cannot ain state because they are considered minors under the police. Yet some HIV-positive women who lost access to land subsequently their husbands died were able to negotiate with a female chief to persuade other chiefs to requite the widows land they could use to secure their livelihood. They got 13 collective farming plots in different areas, Ms. Izumi reports.
In Republic of kenya, community watchdog organizations and other groups providing home-based care for those living with HIV/AIDS are intervening. When they encounter property grabbing, they negotiate, mostly with male members of the family, for women and girls to retain admission to the land and property.
In Rwanda, the government passed a law in 1999 giving women inheritance rights equal to those of males, overruling traditional norms by which only male children could inherit. This has enabled widows and female orphans of the 1994 genocide to secure country.
In Republic of ghana, reports IFPRI, cocoa production is changing land relations. Growing the plants is labour-intensive, and increasingly men and women are negotiating exchanges of labour for land. Under the process, which is chosen "gifting," the married adult female is given a slice of country as payment for her piece of work. The community recognizes the gift as an irrevocable exchange of land for labour, and the adult female continues to own it even in the event of separation.
Currently, UN agencies such as FAO, the United nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and UNDP are working with non-governmental organizations to raise awareness among women of their rights and to back up efforts to entrench equality of admission in national laws.
Merely Ms. Izumi argues that more must be done. "Small initiatives must exist scaled up. What one small group can do is limited. What we accept been doing is disseminating data on what others have done and asking groups to endeavor it out. Such piece of work should exist supported. There is growing awareness of the event, and there is reason to remain optimistic."
Source: https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/april-2008/women-struggle-secure-land-rights
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