Africa

Association pour la Promotion de la Femme Sénégalaise (APROFES) (Association for the Advancement of Senegalese Women)

APROFES works to promote women’s rights; women’s access to resources; women’s participation in decision-making; poverty reduction; and fight violence against women within the framework of women’s rights as human rights. They work with local women’s groups, women’s victims of violence, and women leaders and entrepreneurs; they have a people-centred advocacy response anchored in the community, where it can have more widespread and long-lasting effects.

Inter African Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children in Africa – Nigeria

IAC- NIGERIA is a National NGO with operational presence in 26 states of the country; as an affiliate of IAC African Region it is committed to the elimination of all Harmful Traditional Practices (HTPS) that impinge on the reproductive health, rights and well-being of women and children and also raising the socio economic and political status of women. This is achieved through Advocacy and Social Mobilization, Capacity Building Workshops, Training, Information, Education, Communication (TIEC) Campaign and Research.

BAOBAB – for women’s human rights

A women’s human rights organization that focuses on women’s legal rights issues under the three (3) systems of law – customary, statutory and religious laws in Nigeria. The organization evolved from an ad hoc group of activists, social scientists, lawyers, and specialists in Muslim laws and Arabic who were responsible for executing the Women and Laws Nigeria project, under the auspices of the International Solidarity Network of Women Living Under Muslim Laws from 1993 to 1996. In 1996, BAOBAB as presently constituted formally came into being.

Groupe femmes pour l’Abolition des Mutilations Sexuelles et autres pratiques affectant la santé des femmes et des enfants (GAMS)

Le G.A.M.S est une association Loi 1901. Elle est constituée de femmes africaines et de femmes françaises ayant des compétences dans les champs de la santé, du social, de l’éducation, et une longue expérience de prévention des mutilations génitales féminines. Le G.A.M.S. est financé par le Service des Droits des Femmes et le Fonds d’Action Sociale. Il regroupe 26 comités nationaux sur les pratiques traditionnelles affectant la santé des femmes et des enfants. Le CI-AF a été créé à Dakar en 1984.

“Women, wives and land rights in Africa: situating gender beyond the household in the debate over land policy and changing tenure systems”

The debate over land reform in Africa is embedded in evolutionary models, in which it is assumed landholding systems are evolving into individualized systems of ownership with greater market integration. This process is seen to be occurring even without state protection of private land rights through titling. Gender as an analytical category is excluded in evolutionary models. Women are accommodates only in their dependent positions as the wives of landholders in idealized ‘households’.

“Policy discourses on women’s land rights in Sub–Saharan Africa: the implications of the return to the customary”

This article examines some contemporary policy discourses on land tenure reform in sub–Saharan Africa and their implications for women’s interests in land. It demonstrates an emerging consensus among a range of influential policy institutions, lawyers and academics about the potential of so–called customary systems of land tenure to meet the needs of all land users and claimants.

Women and land in Africa: culture, religion and realising women’s rights

This book brings together ongoing research into rural African women and land rights, with the aim of contributing towards gender equity and the economic independence and human rights of African women. It looks at a number of countries: from West and East Africa and the Horn; Islamic and non-Islamic. The contributors examine women‘s land rights in theory and practice in each country, highlight the key issues and make recommendations.

Changing customary land rights and gender relations in the context of HIV/AIDS in Africa

The effect of prime age adult death and its consequences on access to land for the survivors has not been fully explored nor incorporated into policy regardless of the fact that high adult mortality is now the lived reality in countries affected by HIV /AIDS, particularly in Africa. This paper explores the gendered relationship between adult deaths due to HIV/AIDS and changes in land rights for the survivors particularly widows. In many African societies, women have traditionally accessed land through marriage.

“Property Rights in West Africa: Unveiling the Visions of Women”

This article argues that African women suffer double deprivation in traditional West African societies. They inherit land and property rights from neither their fathers nor husbands. Although some African customs and much colonial influence alleviate some gender-based violence against women and give widows’ land rights even so, many African widows suffer unjustly in Nigeria, Senegal and Togo, West Africa.

Gender Policies and Land in Africa: navigating a minefield

This paper highlight several issues including a growing concensus that solutions to women’s land tenure problems need to be grounded in local specificities, that gender policies related to land ownership have tended to be piecemeal, circumscribed and homogenous and what kind of policy responses might best work: reforming customary law by statute or by evolution for instance?