(Please note: This blog includes sensitive content regarding violence. It was originally published by the International Institute for Environment and Development here.)
By: Thais Bessa, Global Gender Advisor, USAID Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) program
While Ruth was still mourning the sudden loss of her husband, his younger brother arrived on her three-acre farm to deliver a deadly threat: she must leave her home and farm or he would kill her and her children.
“He came with an axe,” she recalled. “I was so afraid. I had seven young children and there was nowhere to go and no way for me to feed them except for the farm.”
Taking agricultural land from widows is common across much of the world, including in sub-Saharan Africa, where most land – around 90% − is undocumented. When land is documented, the property is often registered in the name of men, who are considered ‘heads of the household’. Women are left off the documentation, and when their spouses die they regularly lose access to the family land.
In Zambia, laws on state-administered land stipulate that women and their children should inherit land, but in rural areas – such as the Eastern Province, where most of the land is regulated by customary rules − these laws do not apply. Land is divided into chiefdoms and regulated by customary rules.
Recognising women as landowners
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) Program is helping to resolve long-standing tensions over customary rights and promoting gender-responsive practices to encourage joint land registration. To do this, USAID is strengthening the capacity of local land documentation organizations in Zambia’s Eastern Province like the Chipata District Land Alliance and the Petauke District Land Alliance.
Through the ILRG Program, USAID has equipped these organizations with pioneering participatory methods and socially inclusive technologies like USAID’s Mobile Approaches to Secure Tenure (MAST) to document land in areas under customary laws. The MAST approach is designed for inclusive land documentation, with provisions to include persons of interest, which ensures that the process does not inadvertently simplify the representation of rights or consolidate collective rights into an individual one. Over the past six years, USAID’s Integrated Land and Resource Governance program and the two local partners have documented the land rights of more than 30,000 parcels of land in Zambia, including 155,000 rights holders, nearly half of whom are women.
Leading by example
To complement the MAST approach, USAID integrated gender considerations into every step of the land documentation process. At the community sensitization stage, when partners explain land documentation steps and benefits, they also provide information on gender equality and social inclusion. Enumerators from partner organizations, who collect and verify data from each land parcel and landowner, were trained on gender equality, women’s land rights and gender-based violence. In addition, the Chipata and Petauke District Land Alliances engaged a gender specialist or focal point. Enumerators were encouraged to examine their own biases and how to find socially acceptable ways to encourage the participation of women and youth.
A series of practical guidance tools were developed for enumerators and other field staff involved in the documentation process. These practice ‘notes’ cover topics like gender-sensitive language, gender sensitization of communities and household members, best practices on speaking with traditional leaders about gender, and gender-responsive conflict resolution. The practice notes are useful since they detail specific gender barriers and concrete solutions for each step of land documentation, such as organizing meetings and boundary walks around women’s care taking responsibilities, ensuring that registration forms have space for more than one landowner, and collecting sex-disaggregated data.
The USAID approach also involved working with chiefs and other traditional leaders to promote meaningful participation of women in local land committees and gender-sensitive conflict resolution. In Zambia’s Eastern Province, USAID has focused on traditional leaders, also referred to as indunas, to influence changes in gender norms and behaviours in relation to land ownership and access practiced in their chiefdoms.
With USAID support, the Chipata and Petauke District Land Alliance staff developed their capacity to talk about gender equality at community meetings, centered on the benefits of secure land tenure for men, women, boys, and girls. In addition, staff were encouraged to reach out directly to women and men for one-on-one sensitization sessions. These dialogues offered a safe space for people to voice concerns and catalyzed getting women’s names on land documentation, marking significant progress for women in societies where speaking in front of men or speaking up in public is discouraged.
Securing land, securing futures
Following a one-on-one sensitization session with a land expert from the Chipata District Land Alliance, Ruth approached the local land committee to share how her brother-in-law was threatening to take her land. The committee intervened on her behalf and allowed her to assert her right to the farmland. Ruth and her children received a land certificate naming them as the owners.
“When I got the certificate and I settled back on the land, my brother-in-law came shortly after to threaten me once again,” recalled Ruth. “But this time I was not scared, I had a certificate and it says the land belongs to me and my children. I am a landholder because it has the signature of our chief,” explained Ruth.
Land certificates and the broader documentation and dispute resolution processes are approved by local chiefs, reinforcing local validity and showing the importance of engaging influential stakeholders to ensure women’s safety and secure land tenure beyond having a certificate in hand.
Over the past six years, this work has shown that making land documentation gender-responsive requires a range of complementary approaches: inclusive technology, developing partner capacity, practical and detailed field guidance, and gender sensitization of communities and traditional leaders. This can empower women to assert their rights so they are included in land certificates, and change customary law, helping women like Ruth to feel confident that ownership of their land will be secure to support their livelihoods – and the livelihoods of their children – into the future.