INTRODUCTION

  1.  Empowering Widows in Development is most grateful to the International Development Committee for accepting a report based on its special experience and knowledge concerning an area of women's poverty and marginalisation which has up till now been largely neglected.

  2.  Having listened, as an observer, to the evidence given to you on Tuesday 26 January (British Council; Womankind Worldwide; GAD network (of which we are a member)[31], we felt that it was important to bring to the IDC's attention the desperate low status of widows in many developing countries, especially those in the Indian sub-continent and in Africa. Their situation is very distinct from that of other women as they are singled out for special oppressive treatment in many different cultures. Since the majority of women will one day become widows, and a great number will spend the major part of their lives in stigmatised widowhood, the issues to be addressed are fundamental to the status of women throughout their lives.

  3.  We hope that this report will add to the committee's understanding of the complex issues, problems and themes interlacing in the massive subject of Women and Development. Also, that it will provide them with further tools of enquiry on their visit to the sub-continent. We pray that on this mission the Select Committee members will find opportunities to ask about the situation of widows and their children, and that the answers they bring back will help to generate greater attention to this forgotten area of women's subordination and poverty.

  4.  We are eager to contribute to the consultations taking place on the future of UK development policy, and particularly welcome the now accepted "rights-based" approach to development, embraced by DFID and the FCO, and the emphasis, in aid policy, on targeting the poorest people in the poorest countries.

  5.  The very poorest in poor countries are most often the widows and their dependants. The low status, constraints, discrimination, violence, marginalisation, and breach of fundamental rights to which they are victims to is a feature of widowhood across a wide spectrum of geographical regions, religions, ethnic groups, castes and class. The picture is so whether the ethnic group is patrilineal or matrilineal, or the widow lives in rural or urban communities, is educated or illiterate. The discrimination, stigma, lack of rights (inheritance), and systematic violence in the private sphere of the family and in the public space is a cross-cultural phenomenon.

  6.  Distressingly, in spite of the wide-spread and serious maltreatment of widows and their families, and the fact that their poverty is recognised by their communities in many "wealth-ranking" PRA studies undertaken by the World Bank, EU and DFID, the causes of their powerlessness and poverty have never been adequately addressed by current programmes and policies. This is mainly because the roots lie in tradition, culture, custom and local norms which governments and donors are unwilling to penetrate even though so much injustice to women is based there.

  7.  This is especially regrettable since the issues relating to female widowhood cut across so many acknowledged priority themes: human rights, violence, the girl child, reproductive health, AIDS, violence, refugees, poverty, land ownership and use, sustainable development through agriculture and equal access to services in education, health, and the justice system.

  8.  We trust that this report will kick-start DFID into much greater and more ground-breaking work to help governments tackle the stigma of widowhood which has such a deleterious impact on society and development in general.

  9.  Also, that DFID will work with and encourage the growth of the newly developing grass-roots widows' groups who are the partners and future partners of EWD.

  10.  Change will only occur when widows themselves get together to organise for change.

  11.  We present our evidence to the committee in two parts:

  First, we will outline as briefly as possible the main aspects of widowhood, which are cause for grave concern. Secondly, we will make some recommendations for policy makers and planners.

MAIN ASPECTS OF FEMALE WIDOWHOOD12.  Dispelling myths:

  Due to migration, urbanisation, poverty, families and family support systems are breaking up. In consequence many widows can no longer rely on support of their sons in widowhood, infirmity, old age.

  It is male family members who are the main oppressors of widows rather than their protectors.

  Daughters tend to marry "away" and cannot support widowed mothers.

  In many cultures widows cannot remarry of their own free will. But poverty and powerlessness may force them into non-consensual relationships such as "widow inheritance", "levirate" or casual sexual relationships.

  Women are living much longer, and longer than men. The increasing numbers of older widows are often seen as unwilling and threatening burdens on the younger community. Old age is often no longer respected and old women suffer violence, abuse and often accusations of "witchcraft". Nicknames in the vernacular across cultures reflect the shameful status of the widow. (see below)

  Widows are of all ages, not just old. In traditional communities where child marriage is practised, many widows are young children or girls, or young mothers with a family to feed. Yet the stigma of widowhood affects even young and child widows, and the daughters of widows.

MAIN CONSEQUENCES OF WIDOWHOOD CROSS-CULTURALLY (INDIA, BANGLADESH, SRI LANKA, ANDAFRICA—SOUTHERN, WEST, EAST AND FRANCOPHONE)13.  Inheritance

  Under many systems of traditional and customary law, widows have no rights to inherit their husband's estate.

  Even when laws give them limited rights to inherit—such as under Muslim Law, or the 1956 Hindu Inheritance Law—they are often deprived of this inheritance by their male relatives. (Bangladesh, India)

  Even where modern law or law reforms provide that women should inherit equally with men, under local interpretations of custom and tradition, the modern law is not enforced.

  It is local law or patriarchal family decisions, which are the main determinants of widows' lives, not the state modern law.

  In consequence, millions of widows and children are evicted from their homes and land, their household and other property is seized, and they are made destitute. Often it is the male relatives—brothers-in-law—who are the main perpetrators of these robberies and evictions. "Property-grabbing" and "chasing-off" are now almost household words for actions against widows, and actually incorporated into legislation (ineffective and unenforced) in several jurisdictions.

  In "purdah" cultures, widows may be secluded in the house of male relatives, exploited as household slaves, or given to temples to beg and chant for their survival or as temple prostitutes. (India)

  Eviction creates homelessness, landlessness and destitution. In rural areas, widows no longer have access to land to grow food for their families.

  Widows are often deprived of custody of their children (especially males) since they belong to the lineage and not to the mother, increasing isolation and destitution in later years.

14.  Poverty

  Widows are the poorest of all categories of women because they have no inheritance rights, no right to own or use land, often no shelter, no food, no cash-income, no education, no employment skills.

  Poverty of widows it is not merely to do with their lack of cash-income and resources; it is also about their lack of respect, dignity and joy in life. (We welcome the new non-economic definitions of poverty adopted by DFID influenced by Robert Chambers' work "Whose Reality Now?")

  The burial and mourning rites are often so long-drawn out and so rigid that they prohibit a widow from working outside the house.

  Without cash, widows are unable to pay for their children to go to school. Usually is it the girl children who are withdrawn first from education.

  Widows' children are withdrawn from school to care for younger siblings whilst the widowed mother searches for food or work.

  Widows' daughters are withdrawn from school since, fatherless, they are more vulnerable to rape by school mates and by teachers.

  The poverty of widows forces them to give away their young daughters to domestic service, sex work, or early marriage.

  Without a cash-income or land to grow food, the nutrition of widows and children becomes very poor.

  Without a cash-income, with poor nutrition, shelter, clothing, health of the family is affected, but health care (medicine) is inaccessible.

  Poverty makes widows very vulnerable to sexual harassment, rape and violence.

  The cycle of poverty entraps them as they seek highly exploitative work in the unregulated informal sector: slave-like domestic service; casual field labourer; prostitution.

  The poverty of widows is visited upon their children who are sick, under-nourished, uneducated, scorned, and destined for a life of disadvantage, insecurity and vulnerability.

  This poverty has implications for the whole of society, because discrimination against widows affects the future well being of society. In some countries (especially those hit by AIDS or civil unrest) 60 per cent of all women are widows, and 70 per cent of children dependent on poor widows. Neglecting this issue is bad development policy.

VIOLENCE

15.  Violence occurs in the private sphere of the family and in the public space. Gender-related violence within the family, by family-members

  Violence often accompanies widows' disputes over property. Seventy-five per cent of caseloads in many women's legal advice clinics are about widows' claims to property and protection from violence. Many widows speak of being beaten; raped, nearly killed in order to make them leave the house, land, village.

  Very few women can afford, or have the courage, to attempt to access the justice-system, to secure legal advice and good legal representation to fight cases in the courts or bring their tormentors to justice.

  Village heads, traditional and religious court officials, lawyers, magistrates and judges are often fundamentally prejudiced against women's complaints about "traditional practices" and family matters. Lawyers working for branches of FIDA (International Federation of Women Lawyers) often have little chance to win cases in these circumstances.

  Mourning and burial rites. Degrading and threatening traditional practices, such as FGM, have been denounced by successive international treaties such as CEDAW, the Children's Convention, and the UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence. But these practices, including "ritual cleansing by sex", scarification, restrictions on diet and clothing, continue unabated and are particularly physically life threatening to widows because of the risk of HIV/AIDS. Many of the mourning and burial rites represent human rights infringements, but even where some countries have legislated (eg Ghana) there has been no enforcement.

  Gender-Related Domestic Violence against widows. In so many countries, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, many countries in Africa, widows are systematically and severely beaten, raped, accused of murder and witchcraft, thrown out of the village, verbally abused, sometimes stoned to death by family members. Many widows commit suicide rather than face the every-day persecution and torment. Yet in all the many lists of examples of gender-related violence appearing in the FLS, the Beijing PFA, the women and development literature (FGM, dowry deaths, acid burning, wife-beating, female foeticide), the horrendous and widespread widow-violence is never mentioned.

  Sati does occasionally occur in backward villages in India, and although no one has ever been prosecuted under anti- gender-violence Indian legislation, there has always been much publicity over these incidents. But the day-to-day misery of Indian widows' lives is not addressed.

16.  Violence against widows in the public sphere

  Because widows have such low status, they are easy targets for vilification. Village leaders, police, public officials have endorsed this image of the widow as a predator, a burden, and a threat.

  Many of the nicknames for widows in the vernacular, across a wide range of regions and countries are synonymous with "prostitute", "witch" (rani, raki, daken).

17.  Human Rights and Access to Justice System and International Human Rights Laws

  The present government has committed itself to promoting human rights but it has tended to approach only the human rights of men in the context of acts committed by the state.

  It has failed to focus on the gross breaches of human rights of women, and on the omission by governments to protect women from human rights breaches by NON-STATE ACTORS.

  It has been unwilling to address the complex problems arising from a pluralist legal system, where women's lives are governed by local interpretations of tradition, custom, religion to their detriment, and where the modern law does not penetrate.

  DFID needs to explore ways in which governments and NGOs can be helped to educate traditional leaders and communities on the human rights of women (and widows).

  Widows are so totally without any rights that they cannot, in their poverty and isolation, dare even to stand up to be counted, hidden away as they are in the private area of family, tradition, custom and religion.

  Judges, magistrates, lawyers and paralegals are ill-informed, ignorant; unaware of the precedence that international human rights law should take over traditional, religious or modern law.

  Judges, magistrates, lawyers, etc are ill-informed on the status of the CEDAW and other international treaties (ratified by their governments).

  Judges, magistrates, lawyers and women generally are mainly unaware that case law (precedents) exists which declares the universality and dominance of international human rights law.

  Widows are never specifically mentioned in the CEDAW, in FLS (except in context of ageing) or in the Beijing PFA, but they are "women", and should be helped to access the guarantees in international treaties which their governments have ratified.

18.  Organisation and self-help

  When EWD was first established following the NGO Workshop in Huariou at the time of the Beijing Women's Conference there were very few grass-roots or national widows' organisations in either South Asia or in Africa. This is not surprising since all women, widows are likely to be the most isolated, secluded within their families and barred from about empowerment and legal rights. The few that existed were most often welfare-orientated or associated with religious institutions. They are not about self-help, power and legal rights.

  However, since 1996 many grass-roots widows' groups have been established and these have given widows a collective voice, a strength, a network and a power, but there is still much to be done to link them up, help them to exchange experience with each other, and improve their access to justice systems and the international agenda.

19.  TARGETS

  One of the big problems is that "women" are not a vast homogenous group. Within womankind there are many diverse categories, groups, sub-groups who are often outside the remit of conventional programmes and projects.

  Agreement on targets say for the year 2005, 2015, may disadvantage sub-groups of women such as widows whose lives are so hidden and who are so isolated from the women who are the main beneficiaries or targets of programmes such as the girl child and the young woman of reproductive age.

  Also, whilst EWD greatly welcomes the redefinition of poverty to include social exclusion, lack of dignity, lack of joy and well-being, these situations are not accessible to measurement, analysis, and rating as are other aspects of women's life: reproductive health; contraceptive use; school enrolment; employment and income.

  We agree with Womankind that the unequal power relations between men and women are the crux of the problem.

  We would like to see donors (DFID, World Bank, EU) putting much great emphasis on monitoring governments' implementation of CEDAW and the Beijing PFA, so that targets should encompass the degree in which the justice system(s) have incorporated the provisions and guarantees in these instruments into their administration and decision-making.

  Joy, dignity, respect, equality in a community are not capable of measurement, but accessing legal aid, possessing legal literacy, and equal treatment by law officers who have been trained in women's human rights law are measurable milestones.

  We would like to see DFID working much more closely with local NGOs and their umbrella international NGOs to design and operate information-gathering programmes which will monitor progress. Even small grass-roots widows groups are, with support and resources, very well able to provide the evidence needed.

  SIDAC (Sweden) and the other Scandinavian donors have a much better record in involving NGO expertise than does DFID. Yet it is the NGOs who have the contacts, the access, the knowledge to make policies, planning and targets meet the real needs of the poorest and most marginalised of women.

  The White Paper sets worldwide targets for 2015, whereas the position of women and the rate at which changes can realistically occur differs hugely not just between regions and countries but also between different areas of a country, depending on many factors including culture of religion, ethnic group, civil stability, the state of the justice system, communications. Progress will be at a different rate. In addition, whilst wholeheartedly endorsing and approving a new definition of "poverty" to include social exclusion, lack of dignity, absence of well-being and "joy", it is apparent that no one has yet come up with an effective means of measuring changes in this area.

  As long as donors (DFID, World Bank, EU) retreat from prioritising the issue of what governments have done to implement pledges and guarantees agreed in CEDAW and in Beijing PFA as conditions of aid, poor women in poor countries will remain disadvantaged.

  International targets on women and development should accommodate an analysis of how far the provisions of the CEDAW have been incorporated into the justice system(s).

  For example, monitoring equality in inheritance (see Beijing PFA under the Girl Child) and analysing to what degree women are in fact as well as on paper inheriting from their husbands and fathers would be an effective measure of progress for women.

  The availability of Legal Aid, access to justice system, and legal literacy is another area meriting monitoring.

  It is the in-country NGOs and the international NGOs which should play key roles in both setting targets within targets and assessing how far they have been reached.

  As a new NGO working in the most neglected area of women's rights, we would welcome closer collaboration with DFID, as consultants, in their programmes to reduce women's poverty.

20.  Recommendations

  DFID should ensure that "widows" are "mainstreamed" in all its programmes and policies relating to women and development. Widows are often excluded from projects reflecting both their isolation and marginalisation, and the extra burdens that consume their time as sole breadwinners and carers.

  DFID should explore with FIDA (Federation of Women Lawyers) branches, the Ministries of Justice, Health, Women, Agriculture, how policy and legal changes can ensure that widows keep land to farm, and have access to appropriate extension services to manage land.

  DFID should work with international NGOs such as EWD, Rights and Humanities, Womankind Worldwide, Anti-Slavery International who have the knowledge and the contacts, and find ways to support their work through consultancies.

  DFID needs to put greater resources into legal training on human rights that encompasses the rights of women under tradition, and customary/religious systems of law.

  DFID should commit specific funds to studying the status (health, poverty) of widows in various countries, using the local and grass-roots widows' NGOs to design the project and undertake the surveys.

  DFID, in association with the British Council, UNFPA, UNICEF, UNDP and local NGOs should monitor the progress on implementation of CEDAW and the Beijing PFA at the local level courts.

  Support should be given to widows' national and local NGOs and to efforts to reform land law and inheritance law, including its enforcement.

  DFID is committed, in its White Paper, to reducing poverty of the poorest people in the poorest countries. If it focussed on widows and their children, it could be looking at nearly half a countrys' population. By focussing on widowhood, it would at last be tackling the problems at the deepest seat of power: tradition, custom and religion determined by male patriarchy.

Empowering Widows in Development

January 1999