WUNRN
A Comprehensive Study on Widowhood and Discrimination
Ferdous Ara Begum
Former Member of the UN CEDAW Committee
Paper presented at the SANWED Workshop,
December 8-10, 2011
Distinguished
Participants, Colleagues and Friends, Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a great honor for me to be
invited by SANWED, to this august forum, and have the opportunity to share my
views on widowhood and discrimination from the perspective of the International
Human Rights norms. I will also touch upon
the country specific issues of widowhood and armed conflict; rural
widows in extreme poverty, unemployment and lack of food security; widowhood
and right to the property and inheritance; widowhood and violence and, sexual
exploitation and trafficking.
WIDOWHOOD AND INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS NORMS
Widowhood from the perspective
of early marriage; war or armed conflict; extreme poverty; discriminatory
social, religious or customary laws and practices can be
seen as a great vulnerability and
social isolation, misery and disgrace for widows. This can be effectively
addressed through the implementation of International Human Rights Norms.
Here I would like to recall the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), Article 25(1). The article
reaffirms that everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the
health and wellbeing of all, including
access to food , clothing, housing, medical care and necessary social
services and right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness,
disability, widowhood and old age.
Likewise, CEDAW Convention also
systematically addresses discrimination against women in all its forms including some specific
forms of multiple discrimination and human rights violations faced by widows
during different stages of life. The
Convention focuses on discrimination, as women tend to suffer
disproportionately from various forms of discrimination. Widowhood makes this
situation more complicated and difficult.
At present about 187 countries is party to the convention. To ensure
widows’ enjoyment of their human rights and fundamental freedoms, States
Parties as a party to the convention are under the obligation to respect,
protect, promote and fulfill these rights.
In this connection, I would also
like to mention the General Recommendation No 27 of the CEDAW Convention, which
was adopted in 2010. The General Recommendation provided some specific
protection to the rights of widows in
Paragraph – 26: “Under some
statutory and customary laws, women do not have the right to inherit and
administer marital property on the death of their spouse. Some legal systems
justify this by providing widows with other means of economic security, such as
through support payments from the deceased’s estate. However, in reality, these
obligations are seldom enforced, and widows are left destitute. Some of those
laws particularly discriminate against older widows. Older widows are particularly
vulnerable to ‘property grabbing’.”
Paragraph – 52: “Furthermore,
they should take measures to end practices that force older women to marry
against their will and should ensure that succession is not conditioned on
forced marriage to a deceased husband’s sibling or any other person.”
Despite all these international
standards and protection rights widows, continue to suffer from discrimination,
stigmatization, poverty, unemployment and violence. In many countries, widows’
lives are determined exclusively by patriarchal customs and discriminatory
interpretations of religion at local level.
Despite all the hardship and
social injustice, their vulnerable status remains under reported and
unaddressed by the government. Widows’ voices are not reflected in the policy
and programs.
Most of the State Parties are
silent about widows’ rights. There is very little budget allocation, almost no
planning or action plan for adequate social protection of widows. There is no
reliable database relating to numbers of widows and their dependents in both
urban and rural areas. National NGOs are also not taking strong move to
demonstrate widows’ issues in the country specific shadow reports to the CEDAW
Committee or complaints filed to the Optional Protocol to CEDAW on specific
cases of violence, sexual exploitation and killing.
In reality, de jure and de facto
equality has not been achieved in any country in the world due to inherent structural discrimination,
which is reflected in
discriminatory laws and practices
that deny women’s right, in discriminatory customs and traditions that
restricts women’s equal access and in
marginalization and Social exclusion
which generates feminization of poverty. Widows are victims of all these
social imbalances, neglect and inaction by the national Governments.
WHAT IS WIDOWHOOD
If we talk about widowhood, we
talk about women and we talk about married women whose husbands have either
died, disappeared or were killed and
wives of missing husbands. In some countries widows of missing husbands are
called half widows as it is not known the status of their husbands, whether
they are alive or not.
There is no homogenous age group
for a widow. She may be a 9- year old girl child, a young woman, or an old
woman. However, in each situation if she is poor, illiterate and if she lacks
inheritance she is vulnerable to all kinds of exploitation, discrimination and
abuse. Young widows from South Asian countries and war widows from
WIDOWHOOD AND DISCRIMINATION - VIOLENCE AND RIGHT TO INHERITANCE
The social practices surrounding
widowhood in the South Asian countries show a cross-cultural uniformity. In
every culture or religious groups, widowhood is inauspicious. Widowhood in both
developed and developing countries more or less marked as people to be shunned
and avoided .In Bengali society both in
Social discrimination against
widows of Hindu Community in
During 1981 in
Under Islamic Law, widows are
entitled to inherit at least 1/8th of the dead husband’s property and land. In
practice, this share is frequently ‘managed’ and then taken by the
brothers-in-law. In a 1995 Bangladeshi survey on property inheritance, only 25%
of widows had received their rightful share in the inheritance from a deceased
father, and only 32% from their deceased husbands. In Muslim communities,
widows were treated as their sons’ dependents. Without an adult male to provide
support widows, find it hard and sometimes impossible to claim their lawful
rights to property.
In
Remarriage is not easy for a
widow in
The main reason behind this is
the poor economic condition of the woman who does not get proper education or
does not get involved in any income generating activity. Thus, the question of
economic security marks the nightmare of her widowed life. If a widow has adult
sons, she may have some measure of security. However, if she is childless or
has only daughters, she usually faces multiple problems, including isolation,
harassment, denial of land, and even death. In the Jharkhand region of
Widowhood and witchcraft accusations
In some regions of Africa
especially in Mozambique, Tanzania,
Ghana and Burkina Faso older widows are often subjected to accusations of
witchcraft which can result in psychological abuse, violence and in extreme
cases, killing of older widows. Research shows that child mortality and
morbidity, gender inequality and social exclusion of older widows, plus lack of
awareness of widow’s rights, are the key underlying factors for witchcraft
accusations. In eastern
The Special Rapporteur on
violence against women has highlighted the problem of witch-hunts in
Even older widows in some
African countries face witchcraft allegation and death threat by their family
members after death of their husbands to grab their inheritance. Not only is that in some countries older
widows forced to marry deceased husband’s sibling or any other person to keep
the marital property within the family.
Widowhood and Armed Conflict
BBC report says that Years of
conflict in
During November 2010, I have
visited
Many of the Bosnian Muslim
widows, Tamil widows of Sri Lanka, Congolese widows of DRC, Rwandan widows ,
Nepali widows who were victims of rape
by the militias and security forces demand justice and compensation for their
sufferings.
Rural widows and extreme poverty
UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme
Poverty stated that the achievement of “Millennium Development Goals” greatly
depends on the strengthening of women’s enjoyment of full range of their human
rights including gender equality and women’s empowerment. Insufficient or unequal access to education
and training and productive resources for rural widows is a major constraint
for their possibility of obtaining
gainful and productive employment.
A significant number of women
farmers in
Indeed, 71% of the populations
of the least developed countries and 55% of the less developed countries live
in the rural areas. The rural areas are also home to 70% of the developing
world’s 1.4 billion extremely poor people.
Adequate public investment in rural areas is important for States
Parties to ensure balanced progress for all citizens in the rural areas.
Recommendations:
1. Implementation of the Security
Council Resolution 1325 and 1820 incorporating war widows in the Development
and
As per CEDAW Committee recommendations, war widows must not be seen
exclusively as victims; but recognized as having crucial roles as peace
builders and restorers of the social fabric of communities and families.
Therefore, it is essential that their voices are heard, and they are
incorporated in the post conflict reconstruction, developments, constitutional
redrafting, and law reforms as well.
An Action Plan based on SC Resolution 1325 and 1820 needs to be
developed as has been done by the Government of Nepal.
Widows, who have survived massacres, witnessed the killing of their
husbands and children could be key witnesses at any future trials of those accused of war crimes and crimes
against humanity.
2. States Parties need to develop a
comprehensive Plan to eliminate poverty
and discrimination against widows
States Parties need to address widow’s rights in respect of their
livelihood, education, inheritance, employment, health needs and access to
legal services in both urban and rural areas.
Governments also need to generate a database for widows and their
dependents. There should be adequate investment and budget allocation for the
widows so that they participate fully in the development process and can enjoy
their full rights based on equality with man.
3. Agricultural sectors needs to be
strengthened. Right to property and inheritance needs to be ensured in order to
empower rural widows in the local level: Rural women’s role in natural resource
management and climate change adaptation as well as enabling policy environment
that promotes gender responsive rural development need to be ensured. Rural
women’s access to productive resources, technology markets and finance are
essential, as these will generate more opportunities for rural women, including
rural infrastructure and service-delivery need to benefit rural women. NGO’s
active participation in this regard will protect rural widow’s rights.
4. Social Pension need to be introduced to reduce extreme poverty
Social pensions consisting of cash benefits should be introduced to help extreme poor. The scheme should be framed
in a manner that will not require recipients to make prior compulsory
contributions .The Government of Bangladesh has introduced a social protection
scheme in 2006 to benefit poor widows and divorced women including destitute
women. Under this plan, Bangladeshi Taka 220 (about USD 3) is given to a woman
per month. This program has already demonstrated improvement in the economic
condition of widows. However, millions of older women and widows still require
assistance. Social pensions are an important dimension of social security
systems to provide support to extra poor widows in the rural areas.
Family pension scheme of
5. Government should provide legal
protection to widows from forced remarriage, and from degrading and harmful
traditional practices, including degrading and life-threatening mourning and
burial rites, and punish those who coerce widows to participate in these
practices.
In addition, States Parties need to ensure free access to legal rights
to widows of all ages and provide shelter homes to them who are vulnerable to
violence and trafficking.
6. There should be shadow reports
submitted to CEDAW Committee stating the nature of discrimination, violence,
poverty, empowerment issue, property rights, and other situation of widows in the country to make
liable the States Parties to address those issues.
7. Stereo typed attitude towards
widows is a major cause for their vulnerability to discrimination, violence and
disgrace. States Parties need to educate
people about the rights of widows.