How and why are women’s rights to adequate housing systematically violated in sub-Saharan Africa? How can national and international actors change customary and statutory law and practice to improve this situation? This report from the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions provides an overview of the local legal tools that already exist and those that need reforming or putting into place in ten African countries. It argues that strategies based on human rights can effect change if pursued with strength and persistence.
It is important to make the connection between the denial of rights to inheritance, housing and land, and the actual suffering of millions of women. At the international and regional levels there are strong standards that recognise women’s right to inherit housing and land. However, the reality is very different, and widows’ land and homes are often taken over by her in-laws on the death of her husband, a practice known as ‘property grabbing’. This can either leave widows destitute and homeless, and so vulnerable to a range of further rights violations, or at the mercy of often abusive in-laws.
There are a number of legal and non-legal obstacles to the fulfilment of women’s inheritance rights, many of which overlap. Most notably:
- Lack of adequate legal protection: Most countries provide statutory legal protection of the right to property, but parallel customary legal systems leave women unprotected.
- ‘Culture’ is used as an excuse not to promote gender equality, on the grounds that rights are a ‘Western’ imposition. However, culture can and does adapt to exist in harmony with human rights.
- Marriage laws often do not recognise customary marriages, laws give head of household status to the husband, and women often do not have the right to own land in their own name. There is also a lack of awareness of legal rights, and courts are often inaccessible to poor women.
- Violence and intimidation are often used to keep women from claiming their rights.
- Poverty aggravates rights violations: Financially poor women are much more vulnerable to ‘property grabbing’.
- The HIV/AIDS pandemic has exponentially increased the number of widows; increased their caring responsibilities; infected disproportionately more women than men; and often led to infected widows being stigmatised.
The human rights framework provides insight into the violations and obstacles that women face in the area of inheritance, and also offers a ‘road map’ for progress. Important recommendations are:
- Training and education strategies, coupled with empowerment and sensitisation are essential for giving meaning to laws and standards on paper. Women also need help to build the capacity and resources necessary to claim their rights.
- Advocacy work can attempt to promote structural change such as legal reform and policy change. In addition, international and regional human rights standards can be invoked to promote interpretations of national law that uphold human rights.
- The United Nations should strengthen its existing mechanisms to protect women’s housing and land rights, and its various rights-focussed bodies should continue to make inheritance rights focal point of their programmes.
- The African Union and African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights should encourage member states to amend laws and programmes to protect women’s rights.
- The donor community should support legal reforms; rights education and sensitisation; and programmes to provide women with the resources to claim their rights. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund should ensure that Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers include provisions for the fulfilment of inheritance rights.
