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	There are many barriers for women realising their land rights by ActionAid International, agencies   13 Oct 2016   Women climb Africa''s highest mountain to call for land rights. (Reuters)   As soon as Ann Ondaye''s husband died, his two brothers took all the Kenyan widow''s possessions: the television, bicycle, a fishing boat and nets and even her late husband''s trousers.   Ondaye and her three young daughters were allowed to remain in their home in western Kenya''s Homa Bay for six years while she nursed her late husband''s mother.   But when her mother-in-law died in 2006, the brothers returned to oust Ondaye from her matrimonial home, saying her children were not entitled to inherit their father''s land because they were girls.   With support from elders in her husband''s Luo community and women activists, Ondaye fought to stay on the 2.5 hectare plot, which is in the names of her late husband and his father.   "Being that I know my rights, I know where to go, I know where to report, I am still on the land," said Ondaye, 46, who has trained as a paralegal to support other women''s land claims.   "I am trying to get the title deed and then divide the land among my girls - for the first time in Luo culture," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.   Ondaye is one of hundreds of women from more than 20 African countries meeting in Tanzania this week to write a charter of demands to improve their access to and control over land.   The fittest among them will climb to the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa''s highest mountain, to launch the charter, calling on African governments to implement it.   Improving women''s land rights is key to reducing poverty and exposure to domestic violence, as well as providing collateral for loans and security in old age, campaigners say.   Recognising the importance of the issue, the African Union is campaigning for 30 percent of registered land to be owned by women by 2025.   "Land is everything in human life," Ondaye said, wearing a grey T-shirt with ''Women to Kilimanjaro'' emblazoned on it. "Land is where you live; you have your shelter. Land is where you till; you have food security."   More than 70 percent of Kenyan women live in rural areas, said Ruth Masime, ActionAid''s head of policy in Kenya, yet only one percent of women in Kenya are registered land owners.   More than 40,000 Kenyan women came together to draw up a charter for Kenyan women, which they presented to officials, calling for better representation in land institutions and more transparent administration.   Muhammed Swazuri, chairman of Kenya''s National Land Commission, an independent government body set up to manage public land and investigate historical injustices, said the women''s demands had already been addressed in legislation.   "Let''s concentrate more on the obstacles that are making implementation difficult. And these are attitudes," he said. Some rural women support the status quo, for example, declining offers to have their names on title deeds, he said.   In sub-Saharan Africa, property is often owned by the community, and culture dictates that men own land while women access it through male relatives, such as fathers or husbands.   On average, sub-Saharan women represent 15 percent of agricultural land owners, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said in 2010, a few percentage points better than in Asia and slightly lower than in Latin America.   "We have progressive laws but the government has not been very gender sensitive," ActionAid''s Masime said, calling for the introduction of mobile land courts to bring justice to villages.   Poor, uneducated rural women usually do not understand the law, speak English or have the money to file cases in urban courts, she said.   "Women should not go to our offices and be treated as beggars," Kenya''s lands minister, Jacob Kaimenyi, told the campaigners. "I support totally all of your demands and we will implement them gradually."   Oct 2016   Why rural African women are demanding land ownership and why they should get it, reports Ruchi Tripathi from ActionAid.   Imagine being a typist without a typewriter, a photographer without a camera, a driver without a car. Women are toiling the land, gathering firewood, water, producing and cooking the food; and yet in many cases are not masters of the land they farm.   Women across the world, rural African women in particular, don’t have secure access and control over land. This is important not just for producing food but in realising women’s human rights. While data can be limited, available information suggests that less than one quarter of agricultural land holdings in developing countries is in the hands of women.   Women are entitled to land primarily on the basis of theirhumanity - their ability to use/feed themselves or others is secondary to this. Our Women’s Rights to Land work in India, Guatemala and Sierra Leone has shown that having secure access to land helps to empower women, both individually and collectively. Women with greater control over land reported that they had increased decision making power and improved social standing within their households and communities.   The act of securing land rights empowers women and builds their collective agency. Campaigning for these rights often includes approaches ranging from raising awareness, mobilisation, legal literacy, filing for claims, and securing access to legal redress. Land is a form of security and collateral for women, building women’s resilience and food security - as well as their social status and dignity.   There are many barriers for women realising their land rights – weak laws or their lack of implementation, patriarchal mindsets, policies, institutions, and a lack of finance and knowledge about women''s rights to name only a few. Low access and control of land significantly obstructs women''s access to financial assets, including credit and saving, increasingly the likelihood of falling into and remaining in poverty.   There are also deep-seated beliefs in many places and cultures that regard women as property. These beliefs and practices make it all the more difficult for women to claim land as property themselves. Even where laws have changed, these mindsets often remain.   Across all tenure regimes there are uphill battles to change these mindsets; of (mostly male) village chiefs to allocate land to women in customary tenure, of families and husbands disinheriting women and girls, or of government institutions deprioritizing affirmative programmes to support women’s access to land administration services.   Women’s own lack of confidence or knowledge around their rights can often be another key hindrance.   Whereas the African continent boasts of progressive policies and legal frameworks that seek to enhance women’s rights to land, implementation has too often been weak or even non-existent. In some cases, existing laws and implementation mechanisms have been swept away by new policies without regard for managing the transition itself. As such, these seemingly progressive gestures are yet to result in equitable outcomes for women and men.   Rural women across Africa are mobilising to change these policies, practices, attitudes, behaviours and institutions. They have been gathering in rural assemblies throughout Africa to assert their rights. http://bit.ly/2dJaLmA Visit the related web page
	Global goal to reduce maternal deaths threatened by lack of access to quality care - Lancet Study by Alertnet, The Lancet Maternal Health Series   Unequal access to health services and poor quality care for pregnant women is hampering progress in meeting international goals for eradicating deaths during childbirth, researchers said this week.   U.N. member states agreed a year ago to reduce the rate of maternal mortality, defined as a woman''s death during pregnancy, childbirth or within 6 weeks after birth, to fewer than 70 per 100,000 live births globally by 2030 as part of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).   Globally maternal deaths have nearly halved since 1990 - falling to 216 women dying of maternal causes per 100,000 live births in 2015 from 385 per 100,000 in 1990.   But to reach the U.N. target, maternal mortality rates would need to fall by nearly 70 percent, researchers said in a study published in The Lancet.   Nearly 53 million of the poorest women in the world receive no skilled assistance during birth, the study said.   Women who struggle the most to get good quality maternal care were teenagers, unmarried women, immigrants, refugees and internally displaced women, along with indigenous women and women from ethnic or religious minorities, the report said.   "In all countries, the burden of maternal mortality falls disproportionately on the most vulnerable groups of women," said Wendy Graham, lead author of the study and professor of obstetric epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.   "This reality presents a challenge to the rapid catch-up required to achieve the underlying aim of the Sustainable Development Goals - "to leave no one behind"," she said in a statement.   Most maternal deaths occur in developing countries, often caused by unsafe abortions, excessive bleeding, high blood pressure or infection during pregnancy, childbirth or the period shortly after delivery, health experts say.   The gap between countries with the lowest and highest maternal mortality rates has doubled between 1990 and 2013 and huge differences exist within countries, including rich countries like the United States, the report said.   For example, African-American women in New York City are twice as likely to die in childbirth as women living in the developing region of Eastern Asia, it said.   In sub-Saharan Africa, the risk of a women dying in pregnancy or childbirth during her lifetime remains 1 in 36 women compared with 1 in 4,900 in richer countries, it added.   To meet the SDGs, an estimated 18 million additional health workers are needed, including midwives and obstetricians, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, the report said.   Researchers said too many birth facilities still lack basic equipment, water, sanitation and electricity.   The report said a trend of over-prescribing tests, antibiotics after birth, unnecessary caesarean delivery and induced labour also amounted to poor maternal healthcare.   "Too many experience one of two extremes: too little, too late, where women receive care that is not timely or sufficient, and too much, too soon, marked by over-medicalisation and excessive use of unnecessary interventions," the report said.   The problem of over-medicalisation has traditionally been found in rich countries but it has become more common in low-and middle-income countries, bringing higher health costs and the risk of harm, the report said.   http://www.thelancet.com/series/maternal-health-2016 http://bit.ly/2cfukkf
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