President Mwai Kibaki
State House
P.O. Box 40530
Nairobi, Kenya

[Date]

Dear President Kibaki:

I am gravely concerned about women’s property rights violations in Kenya. Women in Kenya suffer rampant abuses of their equal rights to own, inherit, and control property. As a result, many women end up impoverished, struggling to meet their families’ basic needs, living in dangerous conditions, and vulnerable to violence and disease—including HIV/AIDS. Under your leadership, Kenya has a historic opportunity to remedy this chronic and devastating problem.

It is horrifying that many women in Kenya are excluded from inheriting, evicted from their lands and homes by in-laws, stripped of their possessions, and forced to engage in risky sexual practices in order to keep their property. When they divorce or separate from their husbands, women are often expelled from their homes with only their clothing. Married women can seldom stop their husbands from selling family property. Women who fight back are often beaten, raped, or ostracized. These practices violate women’s human rights, doom development efforts, and undermine the fight against HIV/AIDS.

The Kenyan government must take immediate steps to eliminate violations of women’s property rights. Among other things, its leaders should:

• improve legal protections for women’s equal property rights;

• launch public awareness campaigns about women’s property rights;

• provide training for court officials and local authorities on laws relating to women’s property rights;

• encourage traditional leaders to respect women’s equal property rights;

• implement programs to prevent and redress property rights violations; and

• ensure that unlawful seizure of women’s property, forced marriage, and rape (including in the context of wife inheritance and ritual cleansing) are investigated, prosecuted, and punished.

For the sake of Kenyan women, I urge you to put women’s equal property rights high on your agenda.

Sincerely,