Why women still face a long way to property ownership

Arusha. Poverty among women in Africa has been aggravated by lack of legal support to own property, it has been said.

“When they are evicted from their matrimonial lands, they end up being poor because they are denied the right to own properties,” said a senior United Nations official.

Dr Beatrice Duncan, a rule and law advisor with UN Women, said majority of women on the continent also cannot easily access credit due to similar constraint.

“How can they get credit if they don’t have collateral such as land and houses,” she asked at the start of a forum on promoting women’s access to justice in Tanzania.

She told reporters that Tanzania and other African countries must enact gender-friendly laws or amend the existing ones to guarantee the rights of women.

“Justice to women needs to cover their ability to claim inheritance, child maintenance costs and property ownership,” she said.

Alternatively, the Ghanaian-born Dr Duncan stressed the need to engage traditional and religious leaders in accessing women and girl child to justice.

“There is a way we would be successful. Eighty per cent of disputes at the community level in Africa are effectively handled by religious and traditional leaders,

Justice Gerald Ndika of the Court of Appeal of Tanzania confirmed that access to justice to women and girl child was still problematic (in Tanzania) due to legal hitches.

“For the women, the problem starts after the death of a husband. The existing laws are not categorical on inheritance of property,” Dr Ndika said.

He added that the widows have often been on the losing side on inheritance of property.

Dr Ndika said it was high time Tanzania and other countries in Africa embraced best practices, which will promote women’s access to justice.

UN Women country representative Racheal Boma said although Tanzania has signed and ratified various international and regional treaties on women’s rights, access to justice was not guaranteed.

These include the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the Convention on the Rights of a Child (CRC) and the Maputo Protocol.

Nevertheless, she said Tanzania was currently preparing a new report to the CEDAW that would reflect on how far it has gone on efforts to access women to justice.

The two-day forum at Mt Meru Hotel has been organized by the Tanzania Women Judges Association (TAWJA) and UN Women, an agency of the United Nations.