Security of Tenure for Older Woman
1. Introduction
Older women face tenure insecurity when inheritance laws do not protect them, andwhen their land is grabbed. Both threats occur frequently and systematically around the world. States have an obligation to ensure tenure security for their population, and in particular for the most disadvantaged. Older women are often the most disadvantaged in any population, and therefore states have a particular obligation to ensure their tenure security. This short note will briefly explore two major barriers to tenure security faced by older women in selected countries in Eastern Africa, and measures to learn from to increase their tenure security.
Today, 760 million people are over 60; by 2050, the number of older people will more than double to reach 2 billion, approximately 20 percent of the world’s population.1 Most of these people will live in developing countries. The rights violations they face will only increase as the proportion increases without specific attention to provide protection and redress.
Older women are often the poorest of the poor.iThey face the cumulative effects of multiple discriminations across their lives: discrimination in education, employment, wages, and benefits all factor into their lack of power and violation of their rights. Given their low socioeconomic status in many societies, women – and especially uneducated women – are particularly vulnerable. In Mozambique, for example, literacy rates are approximately 5 percent for older women, compared with 33 percent for women over 15.iiThis sort of reality has important implications: too often, older women do not have the legal empowerment, or the education, or the financial resources to defend their tenure.
Leave a Reply