Panel Session on “Securing Grassroots Women’s Access to Land and Housing in the Context of the AIDS Pandemic” promotes dialogue and exchange at the 15th International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA)

December 07, 2008

	Community Paralegal Workshop

The Huairou Commission, in collaboration with UNDP Equator Initiative, held a panel session on Friday, December 5th at the International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA) entitled “Securing Grassroots Women’s Access to Land and Housing in the Context of the AIDS Pandemic.”  In this session grassroots women from 5 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa addressed how women’s secure tenure and access to land and other core productive assets are central to any effort to address gender inequalities, poverty, and vulnerability to HIV/AIDS. The session also demonstrated how secure land and housing rights for women play a mitigating role in the negative effects of HIV/AIDS and have a preventative role to play in the spread of HIV/AIDS.

The session was held in UNDP’s Dialogue Space located in the African Village and grassroots women leaders from five network member organizations of the Huairou Commission Land and Housing Campaign’s joint regional partnership project known as Women’s Land Link Africa (WLLA) presented in Friday’s panel session. Panelists represented: GROOTS Kenya, Kenya; Ntankah Village Women Common Initiative Group (NVWCIG), Cameroon; Uganda Community Based Association for Child Welfare (UCOBAC), Uganda; Rwanda Women's Network (RWN), Rwanda; and International Women's Communication Center (IWCC), Nigeria.

Esther Mwaura-Miru of GROOTS Kenya facilitated Friday’s panel session and started the session off with a background on the Huairou Commission’s Land and Housing Campaign project, the Women’s Land Link Africa (WLLA), noting that each of the presenters were participants in the WLLA project and that two of the five presenting organizations were also UNDP Red Ribbon Award Winners (RWN and Ntankah). Additionally, she recognized that each of the groups has done innovative work in the areas of HIV/AIDS, caregiving, and with respect to Women’s Property and Inheritance Rights (WPIR). She said, “Widows are being disinherited and a significant number are losing their land and housing rights [in the context of the AIDS pandemic]. We want you to listen carefully and identify the opportunities that exist for us to partner effectively with grassroots women’s groups who are organized [and are] carrying out this work.”

Maxensia Takirambule, a grassroots woman from Uganda who is living HIV positive, told the audience that she was disinherited after the death of her husband. She said, “Being victims of circumstances, we had to realize what other effects HIV/AIDS were having on women. We were being disowned, not having land or property, not having anywhere to stay, [we were] living on the road. We had to network with other networks to do something about this.” Ms. Takirambule presented on behalf of the Uganda Community Based Association for Child Welfare (UCOBAC). She is the director of a local grassroots group, Lungujja Community Health Caring Organization (LUCOHECO), a network member group of UCOBAC. During her presentation, Takirambule addressed two key tools – Community Mapping and Community Paralegals – that UCOBAC and its grassroots network members have been utilizing to address women’s access to land, housing and the justice system. Ms. Takirambule noted that through community mapping in Uganda women were able to develop an “advocacy tool with evidence, data and statistics  … to create awareness of these existing issues/problems to the community, governments, partners, [and] donors.” Furthermore, Ms. Takirambule addressed the positive impacts of community paralegalism, a tool that UCOBAC is developing in partnership with the Uganda Land Alliance (ULA) to increase women’s access to land and property as well as women’s access to justice.

Another successful practice that was mentioned during panel session showed how community mapping of home-based caregivers (HBC) led to the creation of Watchdog Groups across Kenya. Jane Nyokabi Gitau, a home-based caregiver and grassroots woman representing GROOTS Kenya, spoke about how the need for mapping arose from home-based caregivers* who were experiencing increasing difficulty in providing adequate care for dispossessed women and orphans. She said, “In the years when HIV prevalence rates were growing, 2003-2005, as HBC health worker, we encountered problems when we saw those affected by HIV/AIDS, biggest problem was widows, orphans and women being disinherited, rights being denied-very big issues, and we had to find a quick solution to the problem. We met in network of all the regions.” As a result GROOTS Kenya held consultations with these caregivers to design an intervention strategy to guide the community-led mapping.  During the mappings, grassroots women identified the specific nature of the problems faced by women in different communities and mobilized many community members to participate in an organized response to the problem of women and orphans dispossession of their land and property. This culminated to the formation of Watchdog Groups – a tool that was built as a systematic, community-based response to safeguard the needs of women, orphans, and vulnerable children. Watchdog Groups have become community tools that provide institutional and participatory protection to guard against property-grabbing, monitor communities for cases of women’s dispossession, raise alarm in instances of eviction, and stop evictions.  Watchdog Groups have also served as a platform for grassroots women to access governance institutions, to influence legal structures, and to advocate against resource-stripping and the dispossession of women’s land and property. According to Jane since 2003 “We have formed 50 Watchdog Groups across the country, in all regions we work in.” Additionally GROOTS Kenya has successfully resolved 200 cases in collaboration with local authorities and 87 cases are currently pending investigation country-wide.

The panel session in the dialogue space enabled a detailed overview of several of the innovative strategies and practices that grassroots women have been utilizing to gain access to land and housing in the context of the AIDS pandemic. Some of the other successful strategies mentioned included local-to-local dialogues and will writing in Cameroon, training community paralegals in Nigeria, and the Rwanda’s Village of Hope (VOH). According to Adelphine Mukashema, the Capacity Building Officer for RWN, the VOH in Gasabo District in Kigali city serves a community of women victims of rape and other violent crimes during the 1994 genocide and the surrounding community. The village itself is made up of 20 housing units accommodating 20 families with approximately 6 persons per family, making the total number of beneficiaries 120 persons. The center constructed in the middle of the houses provides different services to the residents of the village and over 5,000 members of the surrounding community including HIV positive women and vulnerable children.”

Successful grassroots women’s tools and strategies have been increasing women’s access to land and housing at the local level, educating community members about women’s rights (locally, nationally, and regionally) and changing the way that women are organizing.

For more information on the 15th ICASA Panel Session, write to Nicole Ganzekaufer: nicole.ganzekaufer@huairou.org