Widows, Inheritance and Human Rights
Sponsored by UNIFEM, Widows for Peace Through Democracy, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF)
NGO side event, Report, UN Commission on the Status of Women, New York, 4 March 2005

After welcoming all, the moderator, Margaret Owen (Widows for Peace Through Democracy), opened the session briefed that the main objective of the event was to ensure the specific issues of widowhood that should address within 1325, and the CEDAW, BPFA and the MDGs. The discussion was focused on need for support for grass-roots mobilization of widows from donors, collaboration and participation of widows groups to fill gap in information, statistics, mapping and profiling, sharing best practice. The other objective was to highlight the issue of widowhood of all countries, where widowhood is an issue in poverty reduction, AIDS, human rights, impact on children to be supported by donors to establish international federation of widows with branches and clusters at every level, in every village, town, internally displaced persons (IDP) camp, refugee camp as partners of the international network of widows.

Margaret Owen expressed hope that panel will give the opportunity to celebrate widows. She briefed that widows as individuals and political leaders have supported work on HIV/AIDS in post-conflict countries, they have worked on land-rights and inheritance and promotion of women’s human rights. She mentioned that widows are one of the most neglected categories of women in the world. They’ve been hugely neglected. She said that these are exacerbated by HIV/AIDS and conflict.

The discussions were held inside UN building in Conference room B; around hundred people from many countries were present during the event. The Nepalese delegations from many NGOs were also present during the session.

The meeting began with one minute of silence for Dr. Amal Malachi who was present at the First Roundtable on Widows at CSW48, a member of the Advisory Committee for Iraqi Women and a WAFDI Member, the Iraqi judge who was recently assassinated.

Judge Zakia Hakki, Women’s Alliance for a Democratic Iraq, Iraq
Judge Zakia Hakki, is the founder of Kurdish Women Federation on December 1952, a member of the Advisory Committee For Iraqi Women, Board member for WAFDI, and the first woman appointed as a judge in Iraq and in the Middle East on February 9, 1959. She was been the victim of an assassination attempt (August 2004).

According to Hakki, women are 65% of adult population, 60 percent are widows. She said that 3 million soldiers have been killed over the last 35 years. Thousands of victims killed since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein regime and more and more still being killed because of the continuous state of conflict.One of the biggest obstacles they face is the huge number of widows post-conflict. This poses problem for the stability of Iraqi society. 60% of children and 70% of elderly are dependent on widows for life and food. She mentioned the reality of Iraq that there is no social security system to help these women. She expresses that widows are denied benefits, denied human rights. There is a dearth of statistical data and little situational analyses of their day-to-day struggle to survive. The international community should support statistics, data, and a mapping project. This situation should attract the attention of the international community. She expressed that the implementation of CEDAW and UN SCR 1325 on women, peace and security at national level is important for the advancement of widows. She also said that there is a need of legal recognition of Iraqi widows, as well as a database of widowed women.

Margaret: you have everyone’s sympathy in this room. Thank you very much.

Mary Balikungeri, Director, Rwandan Women’s Network
Rwanda Women's Network is a non profit, non governmental organization dedicated to promoting strategies that empower Rwandan Women in particular Widows survivors of Genocide. The organization implements four core programmes. These include providing medical treatment and Health care support, educating and creating awareness on issues that affect women, such as their human/legal rights, HIV/AIDS, sexual Gender based violence, reproductive health empowering women with their families to improve their socioeconomic status, and advocating and networking . All the activities of RWN are focused on the end goal of promoting peace and reconciliation.

Since the topic I am to address is about Rwandan Widows, let me try to categorize those that we consider as widows in the current Rwanda. We have women widows who suffered the worst simply because of their Tutsi ethnic identity - they particularly suffered gang rape, were mutilated and left to die. Today the estimate is about 250,000 women gang raped, only this figure caters for those who have been able to speak about their plight. Many more still live with the stigma and discrimination of what they endured. Rwanda's post reconstruction has been and is still challenged by the legacy of genocide. The tragedy that befell Rwanda in 1994, left the entire country in chaos. Infrastructure was completely destroyed. People were dislocated and still traumatized, to date the country is still struggling to regain its identity despite all the gains.

When analysing the theme presented for discussion, what immediately comes to mind is the categorization of Rwanda widows. The latter could be placed in two categories and two other categories that live as though they were widows, where then do we as a society classify such a category of women.

Category 1: are widows survivors of Genocide, who suffered acts of sexual violence. As we all know rape was used as a weapon of war and for mass destruction during Genocide. These category of widows contracted sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS, faced unwanted pregnancies and health complications. The trauma they had to undergo will take us a long time to address and this requires special attention. The impact today of all that, is medical and psycho-social consequences and accumulated trauma.

Category 2: are widows who lost their husbands to HIV/AIDS and other types of diseases. The latter remain invisible and silent to their plight and are struggling to make a living.

Category 3 & 4 are women who live on their own due to the devastating impact of Genocide. These women are neither widows nor are they into marriage. Where to categorise them often is a big challenge. Majority of these women husbands are in jail due to their involvement in Genocide awaiting for justice to take its course and others have left the country for reasons either to continue destabilizing the country or in search of green pastures.

Eleven years down the line, all these women have sought to take a different route - either to remain single or to remarry. The challenge ahead is what happens when husbands re-appear? And this remains a legal question especially if there are children in the past marriage.

The needs of women who live on their own, and who live with the devastating effects of Genocide have myriad needs. They require subsidized housing in a safe community without fear of being victimized again. They are in need of medical treatment for the trauma that has been suffered and other health concerns. Many times women and their families fall ill because of the lack of nutrition in their diets. In addition to all this, women living in poverty require skills training to enable them generate their own income to adequately provide for their families.

The remedy to these devastating effects of Genocide require concerted efforts if we are to achieve tangible and measurable results.

Since 1994 the Rwandan government has adopted important measures to improve the status of women and girls. In particular national initiatives have contributed to an impressive level of participation of women in Political life. Women currently make up 48.8% of representatives in the National Assembly. The highest percentage by women in the world. Women councils exist at the cell level and above. Legal reform has been underway since the new government is in place.

Several domestic legal provisions related to women's inheritance rights have been adopted to mention a few and most important is the Constitution in place since 2003, Succession Law since 1999 there other laws that favour women but most important to highlight is the challenge of dissemination the great news. The laws are there, but how many people know about them and can make use of such laws? Interpretation and understanding of such laws is urgent. Frankly Rwanda's political will should be highly commendable and women must take advantage of this great opportunity.
With this in mind, I wish to conclude by acknowledging and thanking the organizers - Widows for Peace and Democracy and UNIFEM for this great opportunity accorded to Rwanda Women's Network, to be part of this panel. And I would wish to appeal to this August House to take forward the following recommendation as a follow up to this discussion.

The way forward:
• Continue to accord us participation at the international forums as a means of empowering organizations like Rwanda Women Network which continues to face myriad challenges of widows. This is the only opportunity to share challenges and together seek for lasting solutions;
• Research is crucial in order to know how many widows we are talking about, especially research around women who have been victims of rape. Knowing how taboo rape issues are, and cultural challenges, there is a need to adopt research in action mechanisms/approach. This offers women opportunity to address their needs while research is taking place. And this approach would address the whole question of ownership and continuity beyond research.
• Request to shift resources to grassroots organizations and their affected communities and giving us opportunities to networking and learning experiences from others around critical issues i.e. HIV/AIDS, Legal related issues etc.
• Enable widows create their own spaces to allow them to share and build on their knowledge as a way to empower themselves.
• Supporting our organization in our efforts of mobilizing, organizing, empowering and networking with an ultimate goal of promoting peace and reconciliation in our affected communities. 6. Recognizing affected women and communities as core stakeholders and respondents would enable the scaling up of our activities run at the community level and offering opportunities to learn from practitioner point of view.
• Finally family to family solidarity building helps re-inventing families whereby families are no more in a country like Rwanda. This approach helps them to live positively with themselves and with their children.

Margaret Owen: Woman, widow, stigma of HIV/AIDS---triple stigma of Rwandan women. Terrible that with the 10 year celebration of Beijing that there is still neglect of widowhood.

Lily Thapa, Chairperson, Women For Human Rights (WHR) Single Women’s Group, Nepal
Women for Human Rights (WHr), founded in 1994, aims to provide support to needy single and widowed women of Nepal. The organization helps these women to become independent by conducting various income generating activities and making the women aware of their legal rights. WHr also assists the women by providing scholarships to their children. Working at the village level, the organization initially focused on working only for widows of army personnel. Within the last 2 years, WHr has expanded their activities to include helping single women as well as widows.

Margaret introduced WHR and its work in brief and said that In Nepal, word widow is a pejorative word. WHR is the first widow’s NGO that has filed a report to the CEDAW. She expressed that WHR is the one organization who organizes widows in the group and mobilizing for the changes all of this during a terrible conflict where both sides commit atrocities.

Before her presentations Lily showed a glimpse of a video named Born Again based on the ill cultural practices that a widow of Nepal have to follow recently after her husband’s death. The video depicted the breaking the wedding bangles of a widow as soon as her husband dies and is forced to take of the tikka All jewelry is removed from her that is a symbol of her marriage—all the gold necklaces and they take her nose ring out as well.

Lily mentioned that due to the ongoing conflict in Nepal, there are an increasing number of young widows where many of them have become refugees and displaced.She shared a report of the study on the status of single women (widows) in which 67% of them are between ages of 20-30 with average of 3-4 children. 29% are illiterate and only 2 percent having a college degree. She also mentioned some of the positive changes towards widows of Nepal by eleventh country code which provided widows some rights to inheritance but still there are many discriminatory legal systems against widows that WHR is trying to change using CEDAW protocols.

Lily told that based on the study she has found 248,000 registered widows in Village Development committee in some districts of Nepal but there is a high possibility of widows who are not registered because there is no concept of death registering. She shared that WHR is trying to document the cases of violence against widows which reported lots of sexual violence and forced prostitution to the young widows. Some of the widows are trapped in Maoist camps after their husband’s death as well as many of their children is trafficked.

Lily added that there is increasing number of young widows---most of them are suffering from sex violations and in danger of being trafficked. Widows are doubly traumatized---as a woman and as a widow. She said that widows in Nepal are deprived of property rights—when this happens they become more vulnerable. She shared the facts that daughters of widows are viewed as liabilities, sons are assets. Daughters are married off as soon as possible.
She also expressed her feelings that there are lots of program to address violence against women, but they are hardly targeted to widows. She expressed her doubt that without integrating widows, the most vulnerable section of the society, in poverty alleviation program will not achieve MDGs. She also suggested the donor communities to support to implement 1325 resolutions instead of supporting Nepal by supplying arms. She also focused that there should be monitoring bodies to see the implementation of international legal instruments like CEDAW and 1325 resolutions in each countries.

Lily said that to empower the widows of all over the world there should be a global network for the widows and need of a widow charter to use as tool for human rights. Lily informed about the upcoming international conference on widowhood in Nepal which aimed to ensure the rights of widows as stipulated in CEDAW, BPW, and CSW Resolutions 1325.

Margaret added that her country (U.K.) and U.S. and Italy are the largest arms suppliers to Nepal.

Fully confident if we can do all these things, this would be an excellent gift for the future generations.

Caren Grown, Director, International Center for Research on Women
ICRW is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of women in poverty, advancing equality and human rights, and contributing to broader economic and social well-being. ICRW accomplishes this, in partnership with others, through research, capacity building and advocacy on issues affecting women's economic, health and social status in low- and middle-income countries.

I am extremely humbled to be in the presence of such incredible women and I would like us to pay tribute to their strength and passion. They are paving the way for all of us. And beyond the panellists, several other leaders are in the room: Florence Shakafuswa, Coordinator of the Justice for Widows and Orphans Project (JWOP) based in Zambia and Susan Zwinoira, Director of the Zimbabwe Widows and Orphans Trust in Harare. I would like to pay tribute to them. You all are doing incredible work in your countries. Your stories are the basis for what we have to do next.

War and conflict are situations of almost unimaginable horror. Yet, post-conflict situations ironically present key opportunities to make changes. Rwanda and South Africa are examples of this. There are opportunities to enshrine principles of gender equality in constitutions and laws, to involve women in political decision-making in local councils and national parliaments, and to reduce inequalities in employment and economic decision-making. This can happen if we organize and advocate – if there are strong women’s organizations pressing for change.

Beyond war and conflict, too many countries today also face the devastating context of HIV/AIDS. The face of HIV/AIDS is a female face. We have to do everything we can to stem this epidemic. This context erodes traditional systems of support formerly provided by families and communities. When these traditional systems of support are eroded, alternative ways of protecting people need to be found. The public sector must step forward to provide social support and social protection – for care, treatment, and support.

Other panellists have commented on women’s fate when their husbands die. In many countries, widows lack the right to inherit their husband’s property nor do they have claims to their land or home. Property and inheritance rights are critical for widows, for daughters, indeed for all women. Ownership of land, housing, and other productive assets provides women with economic security, gives them collateral in order to borrow money, and strengthens their bargaining power. It helps them to stand up against situations that work against them.

Today’s panellists have mentioned the importance of legal change. Those countries which have ratified CEDAW and have not yet done so need to domesticate the provisions in their national laws. Promising reforms are underway in countries like Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. However, even when countries have made changes and passed good laws, problems remain. For instance, in several southern African countries, tensions exist between customary and statutory law. A number of recent legal decisions in South Africa try to harmonize statutory and customary law but there are still gaps which need to be resolved.

In South Asia, India is in the process of reforming its property and inheritance laws. Sri Lanka has some of the most favourable laws in that region. In Latin America, most countries have relatively egalitarian laws, but in practice it is men who mostly inherit.
Judges and lawyers often need to be trained or sensitized about the provisions of legal reforms and succession laws. Para-legal services and low cost legal services need to be accessible to widows and orphans so that they can bring claims or cases to secure their rights. Other interventions include will writing workshops and estate planning training, and there are ways to organize this even in societies which have taboos against discussions of death.

The Justice for Widows and Orphans Project (JWOP) in Zambia has published a book that is a wonderful tool and can be adapted in other contexts. It summarizes cases of illegal property grabbing and includes commentary by magistrates about the approaches used and what can be done differently. The JWOP publishes a newsletter called the JWOP NEWS: A Mouth Piece for Widows and Orphans that discusses problems and solutions.

The Zimbabwe Widows and Orphans Trust organizes “widow’s days” – one day a week where widows can discuss property and inheritance issues with magistrates to sensitize them to the problems that widows face.

Basic statistics on widows do not exist in many countries. It is imperative to begin to collect information on widows in household surveys, censuses, and through other means. We also need to document interventions to improve the status of widows and to show what works on the ground.

At the international level, the Global Coalition of Women in AIDS is a new entity that seeks to reduce the vulnerability of women to HIV/AIDS. One of the Coalition’s seven priority areas is property and inheritance rights. In January 2005, the Coalition organized a meeting in Nairobi to discuss with community organizations, rights organizations and international organizations the priorities in different countries in the region. This meeting identified the need to make alliances between organizations working across sectors – for instance, legal and health.

All the activities – international and national – to achieve the Millennium Development Goals present opportunities to address issues of widows and orphans. One of the seven strategic priorities identified in the report to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment is property and inheritance rights, especially with regard to widows.
In conclusion, there are multiple opportunities to advocate for these issues with multiple constituencies. We need advocacy, visibility and champions. We need to keep networking with each other, to share information and to telling the truth and our experiences to people who need to hear it.

Noeleen Heyzer, Executive Director, UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM)
UNIFEM is the women's fund at the United Nations. It provides financial and technical assistance to innovative programmes and strategies that promote women's human rights, political participation and economic security. Within the UN system, UNIFEM promotes gender equality and links women's issues and concerns to national, regional and global agendas by fostering collaboration and providing technical expertise on gender mainstreaming and women's empowerment strategies.

Noeleen made a speech on the present context of the widows all over the world need to be recognized and said it was indicative of the situation of widows and their neglect. Noyleen mentioned to bring up a slogan that can move this agenda forward. It is not all right today that widows can be inherited but can’t inherit. All widows need to be able to inherit and rightly inherit. She said that women are more than widows. We should not allow the society to stigmatize women just because they lost a male spouse. These women are leaders. Women used pain to transcend…we expect women to transcend barriers after barriers without support. What needs to be put into place to support women’s leadership and get the communities going. She was in Zimbabwe had seen widows who were thrown off land. She saw woman who lost all male members of household and all she had was the land. It was her home. From nowhere, male relatives appeared to push her off the land. They turned her land into a burial ground since they couldn’t get her off the land. Got lawyers and judges to take this case up and turned the situation around. One of the first countries she visited was Columbia as Executive Director Of UNIFEM where she saw valley of widows---all the men killed by war and drug lords. All that were left behind were the widows.

Noyleen said that one way of stopping creation of widowhood is to end the war economy. War is an economy. There is so much investment in it to the tune of 870 billion dollars. Not even 10 billion dollars are invested in development. As women we need to take this on. We need to see the money invested where it needs to be invested. Not in war, but in development. Need to see that women are able to inherit and to become property owners. She concluded her saying that this panel is very important. Thank you for all of your leadership.

There was discussion where Ylva Soman Nath, Swedish International Development Agency representative—thanks to all panelists and asked them that what and how SIDA can support widow’s issues. She said that what should she take home? What are the priorities when it comes to widows? She said that SIDA will be interested to carryon issues of widowhood in the country where conflict is happenings.

Joan Winship, Executive Director of the International Association of Women Judges, said that though UNIFEM supports them in South Africa it is critical to get judges trained in how to use the international human rights laws with customary law.

Mary responded to SIDA (Ylva)--- from a grassroots perspective, it is extremely critical to develop linkages now that we have structures in place. We have a system that is very friendly and the only way to maintain it is to keep good relationship with government. Need assistance in mobilizing and organizing their women.

Caren again emphasized that -what to priorities at multilateral and bilateral level. Do advocacy at bilateral level for gender equality with emphasis for vulnerable but heroic women. Invest at grassroots level with NGOs on the ground with small budgets…community based organizations (as they don’t have access)

Lily responded to SIDA that they need a resource centre for the widows from where we can raise awareness in the communities against taboos to the widows and empower them through trainings and lots of opportunities to make the widows independent. She again said that the most important thing is to make a global network for the widows which can advocate and lobby for the human rights of widows.

Judge Hakki expressed the need a national federation for Iraqi widows. Make them know we are proud of their sacrifices.

The discussions were adjourned thanking by Margaret Owen.