IN THIS ISSUE:

With secure property rights, Rwandan women lead the way forward
Last month marked the 15-year anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, but Rwanda today is filled with hope, not despair—and women are leading the way forward. More…

Legal Literacy: A look at RDI’s legal aid in villages around the world
Helping governments create laws that will help their poorest citizens get secure access and rights to land is only part of solution. People in the rural villages have to understand the laws and know what their rights are. More...

Roy Prosterman speaks at the International Land Coalition Conference in Nepal
On April 21, RDI founder Roy Prosterman spoke about the potential for well-designed and implemented land laws to improve the lives of the rural poor at the International Land Coalition Conference in Nepal.. More…

Documentary about RDI to air on PBS this summer!
Last year, independent documentary filmmaker Bob Gliner traveled to Rwanda, China and India to make a film about RDI’s work to help alleviate poverty through secure rights to land. Join his journey: The film will air on KCTS 9 this July, and on other PBS stations around the country. More…

With secure property rights, Rwandan women lead the way forward

Last month marked the 15-year anniversary of the Rwandan genocide that left 800,000 people dead and forced more than two million people off their land. But Rwanda today is filled with hope, and Rwandan women—who comprised the majority of the population after so many men died during the 1994 conflict—have rebuilt the country and created hope and stability for future generations.

Women make up over a third of Rwanda’s leadership, and Rwanda has the highest proportion of women parliament members in the world. This situation presents both challenges and opportunities — challenges because Rwanda’s customary laws do not give women and girls the same rights to own property, even though women do the majority of farming and their survival depends on that land, and opportunities to enjoy quite strong statutory rights and to create a just society where women and their families can thrive.

Land is critical in Rwanda, as 90 percent of the population makes their living from agriculture. Without access and rights to land, women are vulnerable to exploitation, hunger and abuse. If their husbands die, divorce them or abandon them, women are often kicked off their land, forcing many to turn to high-risk behaviors so they can feed their children. Protecting women’s land rights not only contributes to food security and better health for children, but it also has the potential to reduce high-risk behaviors and mitigate the impacts of HIV/AIDS.

Since 2003, RDI has been working in partnership with the Rwandan government and USAID to help improve the country’s land laws by taking into account women’s roles in the family and the economy.

Marie’s Story

Marie lived in the same house, in the same village, for most of her life. But, when her husband died, she and her children had to leave their home, village and everything they knew. Losing her husband meant losing everything—her land, her security, her status in the community and her children’s future.

So, when Marie learned of a new program to help people in her village title and register their land, she made a courageous decision: she decided to return to her village and claim the land that she and her husband had farmed together to ensure the security and welfare of her children.

As a genocide survivor who had testified against genocide perpetrators before the gacaca (Rwanda’s local tribunals charged with hearing most genocide-related cases), Marie’s decision was incredibly brave. She was coming back to the village where she had watched her very own neighbors murder her husband, and many survivors who testified in such trials have been threatened, attacked and even murdered.

Marie’s land was important enough to risk her life for it.

RDI attorneys and local partners have been able to help women like Marie by working closely with the Rwandan Ministry of Natural Resources to modernize Rwanda’s land policies and establish a strong legal framework for secure land rights, including strengthening women’s rights to access and own land.

RDI has helped local leaders implement the laws, conduct pilot registration, and promote legal literacy campaigns to help women understand their rights.

In some areas where literacy and access to education was very low, RDI helped educate communities through community theatre. The plays explained what women’s property rights were, how to enforce their rights and how to peacefully resolve any disputes over land. RDI also helped train community courts or abunzi on conflict resolution methods for resolving land related disputes peacefully so that they do not escalate into violent conflicts.

To learn more about our work in Sub-Saharan Africa, click here.
To support our work and help more families like Marie’s, click here.

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Legal Literacy: A look at RDI’s legal aid in villages around the world

Helping the world’s poorest get secure rights to land takes patience. It requires political will on the part of the governments, extensive field research—not just desk research—with policymakers, local governments, and, most importantly, villagers. And, it requires ensuring that laws are not just passed at the legislative level, but understood and enforced at the local level. Local leaders, law enforcement, tribal courts and rural villagers all need to understand the laws and know what their rights are to make rights real.

Making laws real for people—taking the law from the books to the villages—requires understanding how to best implement those laws in a particular environment, taking into account religious and cultural norms, as well as a nation’s legal structure and history. One way to help enforce these laws is by providing legal aid and ensuring that the legal aid is accessible and affordable. Too often, families are unable to make the long journey to an urban center, walking miles in the sun and forgoing a day of work that they cannot afford to miss, in order to reach the legal assistance they need to keep their homes and livelihoods.

To help address this problem, RDI helps train and bring “barefoot lawyers” to the villages. Currently, RDI operates legal aid programs in Rwanda, Russia, China and India, each of which is unique and culturally-specific, but all of which serve the purpose of helping the poorest and most vulnerable understand and enforce their rights.

Whether they receive advice, assistance or legal representation in court, rural families gain legal literacy and legal empowerment, and local government leaders gain clarity and education about the laws to help them better perform their jobs and aid in disputes.

Veniranda, a Rwandan who sought assistance from the Rwanda CLA program

Veniranda, a 58-year-old Rwandan widow who lost her husband and, with him, her land, home and source of livelihood, was able to make a claim on her land with the help of paralegals in Rwanda. She is now in the process of getting her land registered in her name. “The paralegals gave me hope. Sometimes I felt like giving up, but they gave me the strength to continue and never give up. Now I feel confident.”

In India, Satyavathi came to RDI after an exhausting 20 year battle trying to get a legal title for the land he had been cultivating all his life. Although the law was on his side, he didn’t know how to assert his rights. Each time he had tried to get his property rights documented, he was stopped by a powerful local landlord. When RDI paralegals stepped in to help Satyavahi, they were able to not only get rights for Satyavahi, but for 80 other landless households in his village. With secure legal titles in their hands, the families finally had the security to make long-term investments in their land to improve their incomes, access credit, and create the possibility of a better life for future generations.

Whether in Rwanda, India, Russia or China, RDI’s legal aid programs give rural farmers the power and ability to assert their rights to land.

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Roy Prosterman speaks at the International Land Conference in Kathmandu, Nepal

Roy Prosterman, with Bina Agarwal, author and Honorary Advisory Council Member for RDI’s International Women’s Day event.

On April 21, RDI founder Roy Prosterman spoke about the relationship between secure rights to land and alleviation of global poverty at the International Land Coalition Conference (ILC) in Kathmandu, Nepal.

The ILC is a global alliance of organizations working to achieve equitable access to land. The Conference brought together 200 delegates from around the world to discuss the theme “securing rights to land for peace and food security.”

Prosterman’s talk provided an overview of challenges and responses to land rights reform over the past four decades, and highlighted RDI’s new emphasis on Micro-land ownership of small plots, and the importance of women’s rights to land.

He concluded by saying, “Well-designed laws reasonably implemented, could help perhaps a billion landless and near-landless rural poor rise out of poverty over the next two decades.”

To see past and upcoming events, click here.

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