| By Miloon Kothari
As we move to the 10-year review of the Beijing World Conference on
Women and a mid-term appraisal of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s),
we need to recognize and act upon critical concerns daily affecting
women that are being neglected at both the international and national
levels.
Women are still grossly denied the right to adequate housing and related
rights such as land and water. We live in a world today where millions
of women are homeless and landless. Many millions more, due to the non-implementation
of their rights to housing and land, are one step away from becoming
homeless and landless.
The lack of implementation of laws and policies sustains the ongoing
gender based discrimination that underlies violations of women’s
rights to housing and land. This gap between the law and reality arises
from the existence of gender-neutral laws, which do not always recognize
the special circumstances of women. Gender biased customs and traditions
as well as bias in the judiciary and public administration, results
in the perpetration of male dependent security of tenure. Even where
legal remedies may be provided, many women cannot afford legal remedies.
I have worked with women’s groups and grassroots organizations
in different regions in the world to organise regional consultations.
So far consultations have been held, in 2003 and 2004, in East Africa,
Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and the Pacific.
In October 2003, we held the Asia regional consultation in India.
We found that marginalised women who have less secure rights to adequate
housing are particularly vulnerable to violence. We gathered testimonies
from a range of women in Asia. They included migrant domestic workers
in Hong Kong and Malaysia, victims of domestic violence in Mongolia
and Georgia, hill tribe women in Thailand, Dalit and nomadic women in
India, plantation workers in Sri Lanka, women in Indonesian urban slums
facing eviction and refugee women from Burma.
Taking the example of widows, we can see the range of ways in which
women’s rights can be infringed. The testimonies by widows from
all regions have particularly highlighted the close and inter-related
connection between women’s right to adequate housing, and women’s
rights to land, property and inheritance.
In the Pacific, women shared testimonies of how widows have been evicted
from their homes and their belongings destroyed by their husband’s
family. Others have had to commit themselves to a life of celibacy in
order to keep the marital home and land.
In Africa, we heard, for example, how women are forced to marry their
husband’s brother to keep the family home.
| The right to adequate housing has been widely
recognised as an important human right in the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights and the Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural
Rights. The Covenant and the Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination against Women, also recognise that women
and men have equal rights to adequate housing, without discrimination.
These rights are also protected under the Beijing Platform of Action
and the Habitat Agenda.
The UN Commission on Human Rights adopted a resolution (2002/49)
entitled, Women’s Equal Ownership of, Access to and Control
over Land and the Equal Rights to own Property and to Adequate
Housing. In it, the Commission affirms: “discrimination
in law against women with respect to having access to, acquiring
and securing land, property and housing, as well as financing
for land, property and housing, constitutes a violation of women’s
human right to protection against discrimination”. |
In most cases, widows experience some form of gender-based violence,
along with the threats and acts of expulsion.
When they lose their husbands, widows are vulnerable to being denied
their right to adequate housing because of insufficient legal safeguards
on their inheritance, property and housing rights.
Within the range of strategies identified by civil society groups
to deepen the understanding of women’s right to adequate housing,
cultural norms and practices have been identified as a critical source
of discrimination against women in accessing their equal rights to land
and housing.
Testimonies from the Pacific Regional Consultation, for example, highlighted
the dominance of customary laws and practices over Constitutional guarantees
of equality, within both matrilineal and patrilineal societies. In relation
to land and housing, many of the cultural and social norms are applied
to decisions made within the family or clan, an arena where women often
do not have equal rights to participate. This creates a significant
obstacle for women in countries where customary law is also legally
recognised.
Poverty is a critical overlaying factor that intersects with the other
factors to deny women their right to adequate housing. The process for
preparing the reports on women and adequate housing has also yielded
the extent to which particular groups of women are affected by not having
their right to housing realized, be they widows, indigenous women, women
from minority or descent-based communities, women living under occupation,
women who have been forcibly evicted, women who have faced domestic
violence, women who have faced ethnic violence, armed conflict, migrant
and domestic workers, girls, elderly women, women living in extreme
poverty, women with disabilities and women with HIV/AIDS.
The experiences of women shared during the consultations can contribute
significantly to strengthening standards set at the national and international
level.
The 10-year review of the Beijing World Conference on Women, therefore,
is an opportune time for the world governments to collectively break
the ‘culture of silence’ that exists for millions of women.
Miloon Kothari is the UN Commission on Human Rights’ Special
Rapporteur on Adequate Housing as a component of the right to an adequate
standard of living and on the right to non-discrimination.
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