Gender IntegrationGood Practices and Lessons Learned from MCC Projects in Benin, Lesotho, Mali, and Namibia

RENÉE GIOVARELLI, RESOURCE EQUITYMARCH 2015

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Review of Gender Integration in Four Projects

2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Benin Mali Lesotho Namibia

Gender Policy

Gender Integration Guidelines

Gender Policy2011

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Secure land rights for women

They need to be legally and socially recognized.

They need to withstand changes in their families and

their communities.

They need to be long-term.

They need to be enforceable.

Exercising them should not require consultation or

approval beyond what is asked of men.

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What are barriers to women’s land rights?

Cultural or legal inability to acquire land rights through inheritance, transfer, or gift

Barriers to rights created by intra-household customs related to wealth distribution (marriage/divorce, bride price/dowry, and polygamy)

Discriminatory laws and policies at central or local level

Poorly drafted regulations and laws governing land and property rights

Lack of knowledge, information, and enforcement

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Benin – Access to Land Project (2006 – 2011)

Policy and Legal Reform

• Land Policy White Paper discussed women’s access to land

Formalizing Property Rights to Land

• Urban formalization

• Rural documentation of customary rights & obligations

• Both primary and secondary rights recorded

Information, Education, and Communication

• Module on equality of access to land, equal protection, and women’s status as landholders

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Mali – Alatona Irrigation Project (2007 – 2012)

Irrigation infrastructure

• Dredged large canals and developed 4940 ha of irrigated

land

Resettlement

• Displacement, resettlement, and compensation of 800 households

Land Allocation

• Specifically sought to include women among beneficiaries

• Market gardens

• Elective joint titling

• Promotion of women applicants for allocation lottery

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Lesotho – Land Administration (2008 – 2013)

Funding conditioned on gender equality reforms

Policy and Legal Reform of Land Sector

• Gender analysis of Land Bill

• Gender property rights education program

Systematic Regularization of Urban Land & Improvement of Rural Allocation

• Included mandatory joint titling for married couples

Improve Land Administration Services

Public Outreach and Training

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Namibia – Communal Land Support (2009-2014)

Support implementation of Communal Land Reform Act 2002

• Registration & administration of land rights on communal lands

Policy & Procedural development

• Policy review included gender analysis of impacts of CLRA

• Recommendations to government included gender issues

• Development and support to implementation of new forms

Capacity Building and Communications

• Module on land rights of women and vulnerable groups

• Women specifically targeted

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Common Themes Among Cases Studied

Good Practices:

• Women representation in community bodies and processes

• Community outreach & education of women and others on women’s land rights

• Early gender analysis and continuing gender review in all projects

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New Insights from MCC Case Study

Gender Integration Guidelines and Gender Policy impact

Criteria for land rights/benefit allocation may need to be different for women and for men

Specific protections and procedural support (e.g. forms and training) needed to ensure women’s rights realized

Multi-touch, targeted, and adaptive outreach to leaders, communities, and women

Staffing (senior-level gender expert on MCA team) and staff training

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Unresolved Issues

We are all guessing about what works in what context and why

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Unresolved Issues

How to identify and record secondary rights?

What to do with more than one wife?

How can we ensure that the changes made in the program are sustainable?

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Identifying and Recording Secondary Rights

Benin

Secondary Rights

• All women are secondary rights holders in patrilineal customary systems

• Secondary uses that women typically rely on more than men

Census of right holders not entirely successful in identifying secondary rights holders

• women

• non-sedentary livestock producers

• migrants borrowing land from customary landholders

• youth

Temporary or informal vs. permanent and formal

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Secondary Rights/Benin

Measures to deal with perception and cultural shift did not start from the beginning

Legal instruments and procedures for protecting secondary land rights needed to be in place, and operational methods for obtaining reliable information needs to be well thought out

Mitigating measures adopted

• Standardized contract forms to document secondary rights and training local government officials to manage and enforce these contracts.

• Added paralegal professionals to the mayoral administrations in 20 communes

• Communes who participated in the mitigating measures ensured that women and the community, knew their rights, that the process was public, and that decisions which negatively affected women were publicized and criticized.

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Secondary Rights/Namibia

Specific steps to ensure that needs of women were adequately considered in the registration process.

• Ensuring the legal and regulatory framework supported women’s rights

• Field-tested a procedural approach that ensured that spouses were listed on application forms

• Promoted use of the field-tested procedures through specific training and outreach to applicants, project staff, Traditional Authorities and Communal Land Boards

• Identified circumstances where women were denied rights through the process and adjusted the procedures and training accordingly.

• Project staff discussed challenges, issues and successes during periodic meetings, and action plans were devised to address known barriers or challenges.

 

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Polygamy

Approaches

• Document rights of all

• Only document first wife’s rights

• Let each household decide

• Outlaw

Risks

• Subsequent wives have no rights to land

• Insecurity of first wife’s rights to land when a second wife is taken

• Polygamous marriages prior to a change in law

• Insecurity if law does not address and practice continues

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Sustainability

Planning for post-intervention

Approaches for ensuring positive impacts on women are broadly applied and lasting

Can outcomes be sustained without a specific person responsible for ensuring women’s needs are met and rights are enforced?

What sort of capacity building is required? Whose capacity?

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Sustainability Requires Creativity

Mali

A portion of irrigated land was set aside for groups of women farmers, as market gardens.

• Culturally acceptable for women to have rights to land managed in this way.

• Proceeds from market gardens contributed significantly to household income and food supply.

With the move to private ownership of the newly irrigated land, market gardens needed to be documented in a way that protected women’s long term interests.

• Benefits of the market gardens for women not lost after one generation in the face of patrilineal inheritance practices

Market gardens were demarcated and allocated to individual women (one parcel per household), but they were managed and titled in the name of a women’s association that was formed for that purpose.

Thank you