| Property and inheritance rights
The
Global Coalition on Women and AIDS seeks to:
Implement laws to safeguard women’s property and
inheritance rights. Women need a secure roof over their
heads if they are to provide for their families, stay
safe from HIV infection, and care for relatives when
they become sick. Too often, if a husband dies, the
widow loses access to that security. Most governments
have ratified international conventions which protect
women’s property rights. Now they need to enforce
them. |
Around the world, issues of access to, ownership of, and control
over land, housing, and other property are enshrined in many
national constitutions and international human rights documents.
Despite the proliferation of property and inheritance laws
and rights, women and girls - particularly in the developing
world - are denied this right.
Where women lack title to land or housing,
they suffer restricted economic options, reduced personal
security, poverty, violence, and homelessness, contributing
to both their and their children's impoverishment. Poverty
can also encourage risky livelihood measures, such as enduring
an abusive relationship or engaging in unsafe sex in exchange
for money, housing, food or education.
CONVENING AGENCIES
International
Center for Research on Women
FAO
RELATED DOCUMENTS
 Human
Rights Watch Backgrounder: Property Ownership for Women Enriches, Empowers and Protects
Human
Rights Watch Backgrounder: Women’s
Rights in the Fight against HIV/AIDS
Special
Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on adequate housing
as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living,
and on the right to non-discrimination in this context
UN Habitat:
Women and adequate housing
In
Crisis - Violence Against Women
Backgrounder:
Securing women's property and inheritance rights
UNAIDS:
Gender and HIV
International Center for Women Research on Women: To
have and to hold
FAO: Protecting
women's property and land rights to protect families in AIDS-affected
communities
FAO: HIV/AIDS
and agriculture: impacts and responses
UN-HABITAT: Rights
and Reality. Are women’s equal rights to land, housing
and property implemented in East Africa?
COHRE: Bringing
equality home: promoting and protecting the inheritance rights
of women
Human Rights Watch: Domestic
Violence and Women's Vulnerability to HIV in Uganda
Human Rights Watch: Policy
Paralysis: A Call for Action on HIV/AIDS-Related Human Rights
Abuses against Women and Girls in Africa
Human Rights Watch: Double
standards: Women's property rights violations in Kenya
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