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Widows of brothers
They [our in-laws] took over large portions of our land. Every day they threaten us, telling us that as widows we have no right to the land and that we should leave.
Bethany Brown
Researcher
Human Rights Watch
Around the world, millions of older women and older people generally, routinely experience violations of their human rights. Each year, thousands of widows across Zimababwe have their property grabbed by their husband’s relatives. They lose their homes, they lose their fields, they lose everything.
Maliyaziwa Malunga
Widow who lost property to in-laws
They take all the goods we are using with my husband, even cars, properties. They left me with nothing. //A marriage certificate offers protection sometimes, obviously.
Bethany Brown
Researcher
Human Rights Watch
A widow would need to prove that she was married in order to be able to fend off relatives’ property grabbing in courts. Estimates are that up to 70% of marriages in Zimbabwe are unregistered, customary law unions.
Slyvia Chirawu
National Coordinator
Women and Law in Southern Africa
Research and Education Trust (WLSA)
Imagine the process a woman that doesn’t have a marriage certificate has to go through. She has to go to the court, convince the court that she was married. And sometimes even if she might have five, six children, the relatives turn around and say she wasn’t married.
Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga
Widow & Member of Parliament
An African marriage has always been understood as a communal marriage. It used to work when it was being understood if the husband dies, what the other family members are doing in coming in and taking responsibility //however that has now been changed because of greed because of the general changes that have happened in society.
Widows of Brothers
If our husbands were alive, they [the in-laws] would not do what they are doing. This harassment is happening because our husbands died.
Bethany Brown
Researcher
Human Rights Watch
If a widow overcomes that initial hurdle overcomes of getting herself to court, she still will face the struggle to be able to pay for transportation and court fees.
Lucia Masuka Zanhi
Legal Resources Foundation
The court fees also, they’re a challenge and I know authorities will say but perhaps for some cases it is just $5 or it’s a dollar. But for the groups that we’re talking about, the groups that we interact with, the rural population and even some of those who are in the urban areas, they are not able to raise the $1 or the $5 that we’re talking about so I think it’s one area again that then hinders access to justice.
Bob Isaiah Muchadya Dzere
Nhaka African Worldview Trust, NGO for widow’s rights
We have to advocate, that this has to stop. // I think much more work should be done to do outreach work, advocacy so that the people are conscious about it, they’re educated about it. If my wife becomes a widow, I want her to miss my presence only. Not any other thing. She must have all the property with her and I am taking care that the property is not grabbed away from her. The registration of the house and the car it’s under her name.
Bethany Brown
Researcher
Human Rights Watch
Widows in Zimbabwe need to have access to information about their rights to property. They need to know about ways that they can defend their property through the court system if someone tries to grab it from them. And the government needs to make registration available for marriages of all types.
Widows of brothers:
It’s hard to be subjected to this kind of suffering when your husband dies.
Deborah said her brother-in-law had “taken all of my fields and even tilled my yard [to plant crops] up to my doorstep. Now, he says that I cannot walk on ‘his’ fields. He says that I do not belong there. I reported this to the village headman, but he just tells us to live in peace.”
Land is a vital asset to individuals and communities around the world. But in many countries, laws and social norms put women and girls at a disadvantage when it comes to land inheritance, ownership, and control.
Men— male relatives, village heads, government officials, and others—hold most of the power over land.
The UN Commission on the Status of Women is examining issues affecting rural women and girls, including land rights and inheritance.
One of the draft meeting documents tells governments and others to take action. It urges reforms “to protect and promote the right of rural women and girls to land and land tenure security and ensure their equal access to and control over productive resources and assets, other forms of property, inheritance, natural resources and financial services and technology.” Such reforms are clearly needed.
Some countries’ laws directly condone discrimination against women and girls when it comes to land and property rights. In other cases, the problem isn’t the law, but rather practices and customs that favor men’s rights over women’s.
Women may have rights to use land, but in many contexts, these rights hinge on their relationship to a man: a husband, father, brother, or other male relative. If that man dies or becomes estranged, women may be forced off their land and out of their homes, with little or no recourse.
This was the case for the dozens of widows, including Deborah, whom Human Rights Watch interviewed for a report on Zimbabwe.
Widows said their in-laws threatened, physically intimidated, and insulted them. Some were forced out of their homes immediately after their husbands died. In other cases, in-laws turned up years after their husbands’ deaths demanding land and other property. In-laws commandeered widows’ productive assets like fields, livestock, and gardens, taking away their livelihoods.
Many widows told us that they lost everything.
Officials who should enforce laws meant to protect women’s property rights often fail to do their jobs. Several widows in Zimbabwe who fought back against property-grabbing told us that the courts sent all correspondence about hearings solely to male in-laws. In some cases, these men withheld the court notices to sabotage the proceedings.
Widows face such problems well beyond Zimbabwe. According to a recent World Bank report, “In 35 of the 173 economies covered by [the report], female surviving spouses do not have the same inheritance rights as their male counterparts.”
An important study of nine African countries told the stories of many women deprived of their inheritance. It explained how the HIV/AIDS pandemic only made disinheritance of widows worse, since many widows were blamed for allegedly infecting their husbands with the virus. It found that widows faced enormous barriers to seeking remedies through courts or traditional authorities, but managed to come up with creative initiatives to support one another, for example through organizing shelters and cooperative businesses.
Despite all the hardships, Deborah counts herself lucky. She managed to get help from a legal aid organization in Zimbabwe, the Legal Resources Foundation, which intervened to get a restraining order to stop the land grabbing. This organization, and many others, are working hard with scant resources and overwhelming demand to protect women’s rights. They are making a difference, but the problems remain vast.
Deborah still worries that her in-laws will try again to grab her land and home. As she put it, “I am fearful, and my heart is unsettled.”
Around the world, widows’ hearts will remain unsettled until their inheritance and property rights are secure.
