 Good morning, good afternoon, good evening to everyone. I hope you're all well wherever you are. I'm Anne Hennings, researcher at the Land Portal Foundation and research fellow with emphasis on peace and conflict studies, as well as land governance at the University of Koblenz, London. I welcome you all to this webinar on risks to informal spouses from land tenure formalization and titling campaigns. Land rights formalization and titling campaigns have improved land tenure security for millions of rural people over the past decades. But while many have benefited, others have been left out, and risk are often highest for women. With growing global recognition of women's land rights as a central factor in achieving social development goals, many countries have adopted gender equitable policies in land rights formalization, requiring, for example, joint spousal registration for land held by married couples or for any couple living in a long-term marriage-like relationship. However, marriage informality is a widespread phenomenon, and emerging evidence points to the risk that land rights formalization efforts may systematically exclude rural women who live with partners in informal marriages. Formalization programs that fail to recognize and include these invisible wives risk leaving them worse off than they were before by permanently assigning rights to the land or which they live and work solely to male partners. We are going to get a summer representation today of the new Global Land Alliance study, invisible and excluded, risk to informal wives from land tenure formalization and titling campaigns, which will be presented by Jennifer Duncan and Laura Bemudis, the analysis of the report. Jennifer and Laura's presentation will be followed by a dialogue among our panelists about the issues raised in the report. You, the audience, will have an opportunity to participate at points throughout our time together. We will be seeking your input early on in some poll questions, and then after the presentation and panelist dialogue, we will spend time fielding questions from you for the study authors and or our panelists. But before we jump right into things, allow me to introduce our speakers. First, we have Jennifer Duncan, who is a lawyer and land tenure expert at GLA with two decades of work on issues related to women's land rights and participation in land governance. Laura Bemudis is a community inclusion and participation specialist at GLA. She is a sociologist and anthropologist and has worked in the land rights sector for over 12 years. Then we have a fabulous group of experts who will comment on the issues raised in the report and from whom we will draw on their worlds of expertise and experience. These expert panelists include first Patricia Chavez. She is the executive director of Espacio Feminista, a Brazilian feminist NGO, dedicated to the economic and political empowerment of women. She is also coordinating the Feminist Land Platform, which is a global south network of 10 women's organizations. It's dedicated to women's land rights and gender justice from diverse countries. Patricia has 26 years of experience in land reform and women's land rights and has dedicated her work to the empowerment of rural and urban women. Second, we welcome Dr. Nana Amayira. She is the founder and executive director of Kohlendorf and NGO based in Ghana that works to achieve land tenure security. As a land economist, development policy analyst and gender specialist, Nana has spent over 24 years delivering interventions to support land and natural resource governance and securing women's land rights. She has been a consistent advocate for the gender-sensitive land governance system for Ghana. Third, we welcome Julia Madariaga. She is an anthropologist who has studied international humanitarian law and holds an MA in sustainable peace. She has professional experience in verification, education, protection, reparation mechanisms and access to justice. Her focus is on IDPs, indigenous peoples, women and children, victims of armed conflict and ex-combatants in DDRM. And finally, we welcome Dr. Justine Rusa. She serves as a senior land policy and gender advisor at Landesa. She is a lawyer specializing in law and development and holds a Doctor of Philosophy emphasis on gender and women studies. Justine has more than two decades of experience in the fields of land rights, gender, women's rights, social justice and others in the Sub-Saharan African context. This webinar is being streamlined life on multiple platforms and recorded. And the video as well as the key messages will be available later in Landportals website. I'm very pleased to see that we have already almost 150 participants. Ooh, that shows how big the interest is in this really important topic. A few additional, before we start, a few additional logistical notes about the webinar. Please note that live tweeting is occurring for this event from the Landportal Twitter account and the hashtag we're using is hashtag invisible and excluded. If you do have any questions, please post them using the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen and not the checkbox feature. And we will answer them during the final half an hour. Let me first kick off this webinar with a little icebreaker. We have a couple of quick polls to get a better understanding of all our participants today. The first is where you're from. So basically in which region are you based? Got a few seconds to answer this question. Wow, we have a majority of participants from North, South and Central America, Europe and Central Asia and closely followed by Africa and Asia and the Pacific. That's great. That's really great. Having people participate from all over the world. And our second little icebreaker question is now please respond to the second question. Which, what sector do you represent? Again, you have a few seconds to respond. The majority of our participants have a civil society and NGO background and very closely followed by university knowledge institutions group. And we also have quite a lot of people from international organizations and a few from the private sector and of course government sector as well. That is exciting. We have a really diverse, we could see now we have a, or here, we have a really diverse audience from all over the world and representing so many different sectors. I'm really glad to see so many people want to learn more about the risk of land tenure formalization to informal spouses. Yeah, Jennifer and Laura, let me now hand over to you to present the results of your study. We are all excited to hear the main findings and takeaways of the study. Jennifer and Laura, over to you. Thank you. All right. Well, welcome everyone to our discussion today. Next slide. We'd like to begin with a brief introduction about why this issue matters, the risks and potential magnitude of the challenge and six dimensions to it. First, a note on definitions. By informal wives, we mean any woman in a spouse-like relationship that is not recognized under civil, religious, or customary laws. In some countries, they may be considered de facto spouses, cohabitants, or partners in a consensual union. This group of informal wives includes women living in parallel households, a common scenario in many rural communities in Latin America, where a man may have two or more female partners living on different parcels of land. They may be in the same community or sometimes in different communities. Next slide. Second, what rights are we talking about? There are many different kinds of rights, land rights that are important to women, including community and customary rights. But today in the context of Latin America, we're talking about recognizing private or private-like land rights that are held by individuals and households. Documents are generally titles or certificates. Today, we'll simplify by calling them titles. These rights are long-term or permanent and they're generally transferable. The holder may sell them, lease them, mortgage or pass them through inheritance. Rights to land are often a rural household's most valuable asset. Let's go to the next slide. When women have secure rights to this valuable asset, they are more empowered in their households and their communities. Their agricultural productivity and household incomes rise, girl education improves and teenage pregnancies decrease and women are better able to contribute to resource stewardship. Secure land rights become particularly important for women upon the death of a husband or the end of a marriage and also as a safeguard within marriages against an unwanted transaction of family land. The established global consensus on women's land rights is now firmly embedded in the sustainable development goals. Let's go to the next slide, Laura. Although we have made many gains in recognizing women's land rights, like requiring joint spousal titling in many areas, informal wives seem to be slipping through the cracks. We don't have systematic data on the extent of this problem, but we do have some clues coming from our project work in Colombia and the Dominican Republic and looking more broadly at informal marriage trends. Let's go to the next slide. Let's now take a look at those trends. Where we see in this table, we see that marriage informality is high and on the rise across Latin America. Hopefully everyone can see the numbers. In many countries, it is near or above 50%. In many rural communities, informal marriage is more common than not. Taking a closer look at this table, we note that many of the most significant land registration projects in Latin America have taken place in countries with high levels of marriage informality. These would include Peru, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and Colombia to name a few. Let's go to the next slide. When we look at that group of countries, we also note another trend, which is that land tenure formalization and high rates of marriage informality often intersect in post-conflict settings such as Peru, Nicaragua, Colombia. We have seen that in other parts of the world as well. For example, Liberia and Mozambique. Let's go ahead to the next slide. In further thinking about the risks and potential magnitude of the problem, it may be helpful to consider layers of risk for women in land rights recognition. Although the rate risk may be greater for all women than for men due to the patriarchal nature of most land systems, the closer we get to the center of this circle, the more likely the risks of exclusion. Today, we're focusing on the two innermost circles, that the informal wives and the group most likely to be invisible, a group we're calling second wives. This group reflects the phenomenon we mentioned above of parallel households in Latin America where one wife is recognized socially and often legally as the primary spouse while others form different households with the husband, living and depending on land shared with him. Traditional community norms have often provided some level of acceptance for these arrangements and all wives would usually be allowed to continue living on their respective land upon the death of the husband. During a land tenure formalization campaign, however, the land occupied by second wives is often titled in the man's name alone or sometimes in his name jointly with his primary spouse. The risk to a second wife then is that she is left with no rights to the parcel on which she lives and depends. Those rights go formally and permanently to someone else. Who may then sell or otherwise transacted at any point and who may not designate to her any inheritance rights upon his death. Let's go to the next slide. Let's now take a moment to consider whether program gender metrics encompass informal wives. In this circle representing all titles issued in a land titling campaign, we see a full 50% of titles containing women's names. This would often be considered a progressive gender goal. But let's first take account of two important factors for most of Latin America. The first is that rural men rarely live alone. The second is that land formalization programs often recognize rights based on occupation of a parcel such as in Brazil or based on contribution to the household's agricultural production either directly or indirectly through domestic labor contributions such as cooking, cleaning, care of children or the elderly, laundry, in Latin America this would be called the economía del cuidado. That would be the case for example in Colombia. These qualifying factors for land rights should then include the vast majority of women living together with men in agricultural communities. So returning to the circle taking account of these two factors we now turn back to the top half of the circle with 50% of titles in men's names only. And we wonder, who are the women living in these households? How are their rights acknowledged or protected? Could our program metrics be masking the exclusion of 40, 50 or even 60% of rural women who live in informal marriages? With these questions, I'll turn it over to Laura to go through the six dimensions. Thank you, Jen. I think, yeah, I think this example really illustrates the potential scope of the problem. In this next part of the presentation we'd like to take you through six dimensions of this issue. And the idea is we're gonna try to focus on making the case for why this is an issue but of course there are also recommendations which we have written into the paper. In each of the subsequent slides you're gonna find a green box that has some keywords and those keywords basically indicate what are some of the topics that we explore in the paper. So the six dimensions are the legal and regulatory frameworks, design and implementation, awareness, social norms, access to justice and data and research. So the first dimension is the legal and regulatory frameworks. The problem is that in many countries informal spouses are not sufficiently protected in the laws. And then when those laws are actually in place they don't always translate into action. So the idea here is that the laws, the regulations and even the project mandates need to include informal spouses. Additionally, it's important to ease the burden of proof to prove an informal marriage which currently has or generally has a very high transactional costs. And so here you see the green box with some of those keywords as I mentioned they are the topics that we explore in the paper. The next dimension is project design and implementation. Currently projects are designed and implemented without really knowing the full extent or the prevalence of informal unions and parallel households in a particular project area. And without that knowledge it's really difficult to design projects or design activities to include, to identify and then to include these informal spouses and these parallel households. It's additionally super important to plan for sufficient time and resources. We've seen time and again the pressure for time to deliver X amount of titles in X number of days. The pressure is so high that project implementers have a difficult time taking the time to go through all of these sort of socially conscious processes to make sure that they include women, et cetera, et cetera. And so asking them now to include also informal spouses and parallel households will require additional time and resources. The next dimension is awareness. And the idea here is that we need to promote awareness of the impact, the consequences of this invisibility for informal spouses and for parallel households. It's crucial for people to know what's at stake when someone gets out, stays out of a title or someone is left out of a title. So the idea is to bring awareness beyond gender inequality and shed light on the potential vulnerability of informal spouses and parallel households. The next dimension is access to justice. And the problem is that currently it's very difficult for a woman who has been left out of a title to rectify the situation. And this is more challenging if she's an informal spouse due to, of course, that burden of proof that we were talking about. And additionally, it's actually even more challenging if she's in a parallel household situation because of all the legal complexity that goes along with that, in addition to the social norms that will tend to add to push her towards not claiming those rights. So informal spouses and people in parallel household situations, they may need even more support to access justice. So the question here is, how do we facilitate justice for all women, but especially specifically for informal spouses? What kind of support do they need? The next dimension is social norms. As I was mentioning, gender norms and social dynamics may impede an informal spouse from exercising her rights. This social dimension is really crucial for gender equality in general, for women's land rights in general, but also very crucial for informal spouses. And we have to realize that cultural practices around informal spouses and the social position of parallel households, we need to understand those two things very well in order to establish a dialogue about this topic and to promote cultural change concerning the rights to land of informal spouses. The final dimension is really two in one, it's data and research. Currently projects don't collect data on marriage status. And this really doesn't allow us to understand the scope of the situation. It doesn't allow us to do research on it. So the question is, how can we capture data on the people who are being excluded, invisible? And what we wanna know is where else is this occurring? Who is looking at this? Who out there of you guys is looking at this? And how can we shape the future research to include this phenomenon? And that's really why we're here today for this discussion. But if you take one thing today, we'd like you to take this question and kind of put it in your pocket and take it with you to your research work, your field work, your project design work. And the question is, what can we do to ensure that informal wives are included in land formalization campaigns? And with that, I thank you for your time and your attention. And now we can move on to the discussion. Jennifer, Laura, thank you so, so much for your, yeah, for sharing this cutting edge work you are doing. But first you want to get some reactions from our panelists. We have, who have had a chance to read this study before this webinar. Let me pose the first question to Justine. In which ways are informal spouses disadvantaged in your working context and why? Thank you so much for that question. And like everybody's saying, I'm very honored to be part of this discussion because this is, despite the women in this category being invisible and excluded, it's such a huge issue that does not affect the individual women in this situation, but it affects even their families, their nations and the region at large. And I'm saying this because in the different countries that have had an opportunity to work in, in the area of land rights, there is no single country where this is not an issue. And you wonder why this issue is not usually addressed. So what are the challenges associated with this to the women themselves? So one is that these women lack legal protection. They lack legal protection in a way that they are usually excluded out of land rights. And they are in some places, they are also excluded in the constitutions because the constitutions require that, to have rights, you must be formally married. So when these women's land rights and property rights are violated, they have no legal recourse. The other one is that, I mentioned that state, but it's that their property rights are violated. I think like the president has mentioned, these women are part of these unions and they contribute to it, not necessarily just through their labor to the family, through childcare and give them production and but sometimes they even contribute materially. But the fact is that in more cultures, property is associated with being a man. So when the relationship falls out, the woman cannot claim rights because socially the property and the land of that family belongs to that man. And also while still in that relationship, you find that in most times she has no control of how to use or benefit from the land. The other issue is that women's lack of rights due to the informal unions multiplies their vulnerability. It multiplies their vulnerability because they are forced to stay in unworking relationships including physical violence. Because if they live, sometimes they have nothing to live on, sometimes they have nowhere to go. So they are forced to stay in that situation for themselves, but also for the children that they, if they have children, they were able to acquire in that relationship. And there's also a high possibility of generational poverty from that family. Because if the woman suffers from poverty because she has no rights to the property of that family or she's sent off the home, it's likely to impact on her children. Her children will not be able to earn an education, her children will not be able to earn a good living. So again, the children are likely to fall into the same trap that their mothers fall into. In most cultures in Africa, being informal marriages carry a social stigma. For example, in Iranda, if you are in an informal union, you are regarded as to translate literally as a prostitute, in die. So you're not socially decognized or even respected. So again, this is a big issue. And this also comes with a lot of repercussion, no respect from their biological family, no respect from the families they were married into. And again, just because I now have three minutes, the other thing that I want to talk about is most times the women suffer from child care burden. So when the woman is abandoned by the man for another woman, because she cannot claim her rights to property, especially to land, which is the main asset that most rule of families depend on. But also in urban places, you find that if they have a house or a house on rent or the house they live in, if this woman cannot have rights on it, then she's likely to show that the whole burden of finding a place to live for her and the children, of providing for those children, which again is an issue that is associated with a lack of right because she's in an informal union. So the women in these categories really face multiple challenges or disadvantages them compared to women in marriages that have legal records. And this is a huge issue. For example, in Iran that it was increased by COVID, it has been there historically, even before the genocide, after the genocide, but now even COVID has worsened it. And again, with the issue of poverty that again comes from poverty. So I think it's a major issue like the presenters was talking about. And we cannot name all the effects that comes with it, but the major ones are the ones that have mentioned. Thank you. Back to you, Anne. Thank you, Jessica. Thank you. Very interesting. Nana Anna, where was this issue? Thank you very much. And as always, very happy to be part of the conversation. So yes, informal and polygamous marriages exists in many local communities across all the regions in Ghana. And it is especially predominant in areas where farming is the main economic activity. The situation regarding the land and property rights of women in such unions is complicated to say the least. But how the situation turns out for women in such unions depends a lot on whether the property or the land they are working on or occupying was acquired for valuable consideration or whether they were working on land that belongs to the extended family or whether the woman in this case is an indigent of a land-owning community. The scenarios present different opportunities and challenges for women in such informal unions. But in most cases across board, whether the land was acquired for valuable consideration or not, whether they are working on a farm land that belongs to the extended family or not, or whether the woman is an indigent of the ethnic group. It all comes to the point that the situation of women in such informal unions become riskier than other women if they are properly married in the case of the culture and the law in Ghana. The case is that in Ghana, most farmers migrate from one part of the country to another, especially those people who are from areas where the land is not fertile. So across you have farmers traveling from parts of the country to areas where they have forest land to be able to have fertile land for cocoa, cashew, oil palm, and so on. What happens typically is that when they are traveling, they go alone. So they go to acquire the land, they develop the land, tell it, and get it ready for their cropping. And the moment the land is ready for the farming, they bring the wife and the children. And usually before the wife even arrives, the man would have already started some arrangement with another woman in an informal way. And so it becomes a situation where by the time the woman comes back, the wife comes back, certain processes have started already as far as the household is concerned. And so it creates an extension between what actually the place are or the places are for these two women. But in the normal situation in Ghana, you find that because the man is the one who goes ahead to acquire the land, whether the woman works with him or not, whether the woman is in a formal union or an informal union, the face of the man is considered to be the face of ownership for the land. It doesn't matter how much work the woman does on the farm. And therefore, whenever there are any engagements towards formalization or any activity relating to the land, it is the man's face that comes up. In fact, in most projects, you would see that even as they do enumeration of the farmers, even as they do enumeration of people who own parcels of land for any kind of intervention, it's always the case that the face of the man is what they are looking out for. And so the women who are behind these men in terms of working on the farms are very, very much limited in terms of opportunities for them to be part of such processes. So largely just as the research that Jen and Laura presented shows, yes, the case of informal wives in such unions is very precarious when it comes to land rights generally. But when it will lift it to the level of trying to formalize the ownership and the land rights, then the risk of these women losing out is higher because then they are not counted to be part of the ownership. And that is a risk that also pertains in the situation here in Ghana. Thank you. Thank you so much, Nana, for sharing your insights. Well said. Patricia, how does the situation for informal wives look like in Brazil? Okay, thank you very much. And I would say that in Brazil, the situation is not very different from what my colleagues just presented in the sense that, especially in the rural areas, women are the ones that have more vulnerability to lose their lands because of the reasons, all the reasons that they address it presented. So yes, we do have a big problem when it comes to women's land rights and the national census, the national data indicates that women are the one that has less land and the worst piece of land all over Brazil. And of course, Brazil has another problem which is the huge land concentration. So we follow into this problem of land concentration and grabbing and the problem of extractivism the problem that we are facing with the indigenous population and so on. So it's the same problem all over, I think the Latin America. However, we have a very progressive law in legislation which will recognize the rights of women regardless, since our constitution, regardless of their marital status, which means not just a marriage between a man and a woman, but also the home of effective marriage is recognized by law. And for the formal, the married, the informal and we have a difference here between the people living in civil union, but formalized, so they go to the north and they formalize their union and the ones that just live together and they are totally informal. So these groups are in great risk. So the legislation and the civil code, we have made a huge progress in that field and we have the social movements and the social movements, especially the feminist movement, the agrarian movements, the MST, the landless social movement, they are buying this agenda and they are buying this, how can I say it? And this need to address gender injustice in the process of land regularizations. And but we still have a long way to go. I think that you touched too, and this study is very good, well done. I think that there are two aspects of this study that have to highlight and in Brazil as well as I think in the whole Latin America. One is the lack of data, disaggregate data. We have disaggregate data in Brazil, but the people, the policy makers, when designing their policy, especially if you are in a local government, they don't rely on this disaggregated data. That's the first thing. And the second thing is the need to engage in more awareness process. Because I wrote an article about the difference between what is in the law and the reality. And the fact is that people don't know about their rights. We are just doing a process in bonito and it's amazing how people don't even know who are in charge of performing the length regularization, for instance. So I think that there are two areas of big concern, the lack of data and using available data to inform the project. And the other one is building awareness once you start a project before the project implementation. And that's it for now. Thank you very much. Back to you. Thank you, Patricia, for those insights and how of the social movements, even though it is long a way to go still. Julia, what are the main challenges related to tenure security for informal spouses in Colombia? Thank you, Ani. Thank you everyone for joining us today. Well, in Colombia, as our colleague from Brazil said, we have really a strong legal framework that allows to recognize from 2010 the unpaid care work that women do as part of the economy. That's what Jennifer referred as to economía del cuidado. And also from 2017, we have a law that recognized that unpaid care work amounts to ownership of the land. So currently we are seeing the need to bring together these informal relationships to be able to apply those legal frameworks to actually provide women with titles because culturally, and that's what I linked the six dimensions that Laura shared with us, in gender norms in Colombia, we had traditional ownership of land also in men's history. We have like until 1974, women weren't allowed to have their own plots of land. So we have to change those gender norms and bring people to know that not only unpaid care work is work and it has a value but also that it amounts to ownership of the land. Of course, when you have multiple households, which is also common in Colombia, then you have to resort to legal routes to ensure both spouses and all the children that are involved in these households have their own right. But basically we need to make sure that women are entitled and they know that they are and also that they don't face any kind of retaliation because not only their spouses, but also their sons may be feel that if women become part of the owners of the land, their last name and their ownership might change when they marry somebody outside because they inherit their own name. So it's part of culture. We need to challenge those gender norms that been for so long in our culture and try to bring this legal frameworks forward. I know there are main great efforts right now with different projects of land formalization in Colombia, but we need to make sure that the legislation doesn't only exist, but also it gets applied in concrete cases to allow women to actually enjoy the ownership. And as all my colleagues said, when a woman it's the owner of her land, well, she's better protected against violence against women. She has better options tackling climate change. They have better options fighting poverty and fighting hunger. So it benefits the whole community and it benefits the whole of our family. So that's one dimension we're working on to make sure everybody noticed that when women are having their rights recognized, then everybody benefits from it. Thank you. Back to you, Anne. Thank you, Julia. And all our expert panelists for their reactions to this study and sharing insights into their own experiences. Let us now move on to the second round of questions. Nana, how do the three circles of risks play out in your working context in Ghana? Thank you, Anne. So yes, the circles representing the informal wives and the second wives, especially, that's informal in the sense that these women have become parts of a union without having been put through the process of customary performances to get them married. And for some who are also joining the household as second or even third wives, these are the women we are talking about and this is what was highlighted in the circles, especially that Jen and Laura mentioned in the presentation. The other circles are also important, but today we are focusing on these two. And yes, the risk that's played out. The point is that in Ghana, there are strong cultural and religious principles underpinning societal perceptions about women who allow themselves to be in union with men under such arrangements. That's a difference from what is considered to be appropriate in the Ghana society. And that is really the point. So it is not about the men who take the lead to ask these women to be part of this union. No, but the stigma and the perceptions are actually about the women. So that in itself brings on a lot of stigma and negative perceptions about women in such union and that influences their status and the recognition they get in society. And I think from what we have heard so far, this is not only a phenomenon in Ghana, it is largely a global phenomenon. But more importantly, as we are saying, it impacts the recognition that women have in society, especially when it comes to discussing such important matters as land and property rights. And it also affects the value placed on them in society as women. And so especially when the spouse passes away, then it becomes even a more difficult situation for the woman to handle because from a cultural point of view, such a person may not even be considered as a spouse and therefore would have to even perform her own funeral in a separate household and things like that. So it's really a difficult situation for a woman who find herself in such a situation. The challenge for women existing in these circles that we are talking about is complicated in a number of ways. It's important to mention however, that in Ghana under the land laws, there are different types of rights and interests in land that are held by men and women, of course. And also has that significant role on how women fare under any of these rights. And what I mean by that is that under the laws, there are six types of rights on land. And each of these types of rights in land have different implications for women. And let me pick a particular one, which is called the Isufruturi interest in land. That type of interest in land is an inherent one. So you don't acquire it, it's inherent. You have that right by best. And it is because you are part of a land-owning community. If a man acquires such a property because of being part of the land-owning community, then the property is forever for the family. It doesn't matter whether your arrangement is formal or informal. You as a woman cannot be documented as co-owner of such a parcel. And it's the same for the woman. If the parcel is in the hands of the family of the woman, then the woman can hold it, but the man cannot have it. But specifically related to informal wives, what happens is that if you are informal wife, then apart from the fact that the property is for the family, you'll be the informal wife means that and the man passes away, you don't even have a place on the farm. You are not recognized as part of the family and you are not allowed to benefit from any of the proceeds. So to a large extent, it's critical to consider the influence of the gender dynamics on women as far as land and property rights is concerned. But as we have seen so far, there are different categories of women and the fate, the outcome for women in informal unions, especially those in polygamous marriages and those in unofficial or informal unions become worse because of the cultural, societal and religious perceptions that influence the status given to them in society. Thank you, Nana. Well said. I'd like to stick my perception of informal marriage like life was a woman. Patricia, from your experience, I'm really curious to hear briefly in which ways do the three circles of risk play out in Brazil? Yeah, I think that of course the informal wives, they are always in risk, in danger. And as the other speaker said, it is a big issue, especially in the rural area where they don't have information, they don't have knowledge about their rights. There are still multiple marriages and land is the very important asset for life. So there is land disputes and among the families and so on. But I would like to jump to a very concrete example on how we can do things differently. And I'm gonna rely on the experience that we are having in Bonito, one area of Pernambuco, we did in other areas, but this example is very important to go down to the ground and see how we can do differently. And I think that our work in Pernambuco we start doing the process and it's very important to note that first of all, we did the research and we collect data about the household, about the families and we did including the marital status, considering formal, informal, all the categories. So it was based on the ground reality. And I think that the investment in collecting data is very important when we are designing a project and when we are implementing a project. In this case, we are doing in partnership and it's also very important to say that according to our law, it's up to the municipality to perform the land regularization, rural and urban and it is an opportunity for women because if you are dealing with the local government, it's easier for the women to get access to their governments to establish a dialogue differently from state or national governments. In this case in Pernambuco, because we had a partnership between the government, the local government and a feminist organization, we set up a survey in which women could inform their legal status and the marital status and the outcome was amazing. Right now, we had 1500 lands registered and believe me, 69% was in the name of women. Last week, we just gave some land titles in one area in which women live for 38 years and we got 50% of the land titles handling to women as the only beneficiary and 35% of the land titles going for drawing titles. Most of them having the women as the first beneficiary and it's a very symbolic but very important aspect in many of these women, they were in totally informal unions. So I think that we can make a difference. We can make a difference during the project implementation. We can make a difference by having data informing the community because sometimes people talk a lot about data, data, data to inform the government to inform, no, we need to have data to inform the community, building awareness and also engaging the community members. I wanna stop by saying that many years ago in Ponte do Maduro, we did a huge process of land regularization and one women said something, she was shouting. She said, no doctor knows my community better than I do. I know who lives in the street in every house and I hope I know who is married, who is single, who is informal union. So I think that we have to understand the importance of engaging with the community and having the community taking part of this process because otherwise we lose the opportunity to address all these questions. Thank you very much and back to you. Thank you, Patricia. Yeah, a team said the lack of data and also knowledge is one of the key problems to approach on this issue. Moving on to Justine, what is your experience with land tenure and security for informal wives and post-conflict Rwanda and Liberia? Thank you so much. I think for the interest of time, I'll go through in a form of bullet points and if anyone has questions, I can answer later. So conflict and natural hazards that makes the situation of women in informal relationships even much worse than any other category of human beings in the post-conflict or post hazard situation. Any Rwanda, for example, and it applies also to Liberia, it's very similar. There were property grounds from the male relatives, even female relatives of the deceased husband or the deceased partner, where the woman was outright told you're not married, you don't belong to this family, so get off your land. And sometimes she would have children, but it made it worse if the children were girls. Extended relatives would come and take the land off them. The other issue is that land grabbing after the genocide from the women who didn't have legal protection also increased their vulnerability. Imagine she is a survivor probably with disease, probably with disabled, probably with orphans, or all of those single women. And then the little asset that would have made her would have fed her and perhaps her dependence is taken off her. So that increased her trauma, her vulnerability. We had situations where young girls for not having land, not having anywhere to be, not having a look upon their head, were found themselves in sexual abuse within orphanages or people who took them over to take care of them. Some of the young women were forced into sexual trade as the only form of living. And again, this also increased in the number of informal marital unions, because we had women who just had to live with anybody to have a roof on their head and somebody to provide for them. Again, it was not only for the survivor, but also for the women who are left by their husbands who committed their atrocities and left the country. And for them, again, there was also a unique situation where the man who lives outside, because the woman has no legal protection, would ask their relatives to sell the land and proper and send them money. Again, that is another category of women, but two categories of women facing a very similar situation. For the government, particularly in this both contexts, you find that governments abandoned with the social and economic burden of taking care of these people. For example, economically, like the number of children who are not unaccompanied, because sometimes even the women might find themselves not having anywhere to go or using the children to beg, and then they are taken off the streets, that kind of thing, security-wise killings and beatings and all those kind of things. And the government has to pour more money into protecting these people. And for random specifically, it led to the peak adoption of the 1999 law of inheritance, which catered for marital regimes. It catered for marital regimes because we also had a situation where young men would envision a woman who inherited property, and these are legally married women. Young men would envision women who survived with property and then decide to get married to them and take all the property advantage of that situation. So you find that in the post-conflict and post-natural hazards like COVID-19, the situation of women in informal unions gets worse. And because this woman has no protection, it will not matter how many numbers of children she has, you'll find that we had situations in Iran where a man, for example, and where a man, some men raised their status after the war on genocide and looked upon the wives they had before because they had not married them formally. And then they went for the young girls, abandoning this woman because she didn't have rights to claim anything. And one thing we should take note of here, it's not only during the war that it's the post-war, it continues because it multiplies the vulnerability. You find that even today, whether it's in Liberia, whether it's in Iran, we still have the impacts that come from those unions following children born out of those unions. You find that a young woman who married in the same situation that their mothers were in, because she's also living for somewhere to live and somebody to support them because they don't have enough resources to take care of themselves. So like I'm saying, what happens in the war or post-conferred war also multiplies itself even in the peace times. So that is the situation that were in Iran, but lucky enough, the government, looking at how the situation was took the responsibility and adopted a law to protect the property of those women. Thank you very much. Here we go. Thank you, Justine, for sharing your insights. Very fascinating. Julia, how, moving on to you, how has a land tenure insecurity for informal spouses played out in post-conflict Colombia where land has played a key role during and in the aftermath of the conflict? Thank you so much. And well, our experience is pretty mixed because we have a law, the victims law, because we have more than 90 million people that it's on the victims registry. So we have a specific law that allows for victims to gain back their lands by a special court ruling. So women are included in this court rulings by judges just addressed only for reparation processes and most of the victims are women. So when they are alone as head households or when they are widows from their partners that were killed in the conflict, they can access through this court ruling to their past lands or have any other form of compensation. But in the current measures addressed by the peace agreement signed five years ago, we have new ways to address formalization of former occupied lands. And that's when things become tricky because you have to then apply not only formalization which is not the result of our ruling and you have these joint titles which as I said before, it's difficult because of the lack of recognition of women's rights to land. So we are working on that. We have 15 years to implement the peace agreement. So hopefully we will see more advance in this land filings for women in joint titles with their partners by recognizing their own paid care work and their right to land. Thank you. Back to you, Anne. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Julia. Now we will move on to our third round of questions to the panelists. I will cut it a bit short here just to leave some more space for our Q&A round. I see there's a lot of questions coming in already. So let me start with Julia again. Julia, where do current land formalization projects fall short in addressing these issues? Well, thank you, Anne again. Well, the thing is only the state can provide land titles. So when projects that aim to support the state doesn't have enough data or doesn't have the procedures that recognize these rights that we just mentioned, then they cannot fulfill that lack of data or that lack of procedures to recognize women on the title. So teams have to get creative, have to get extra filling forms to ensure that women are recognized on the procedures. And after that, just to advocate before the state to allow these procedures to become like former regular procedures by the state itself. Because if we don't change the state to recognize that, no matter how much the private sector actually advocates for it, it won't get the title because we don't get as private sector that prerogative. So the state has to change and we are working on that. Thank you. Well said, well said. Thank you, Julia. Justine, I'm moving on to you. What needs to be done to address the current lack of data? Thank you. In the interest of time, I think I just want to support what the researcher says. I don't have much to add on to that, but just to emphasize that this situation is contextual. So it's not similar in every country. In some countries, it's somehow recognized, but the way it's recognized, it does not recognize the property rights of women and does not even protect them. So what needs to be done to have these women visible and included is to borrow the word mainstreaming and mainstream this issue from the conceptual level of land reform. Making sure that you find that in most countries, it comes into visibility when they are actually piloting the land law, starting the registration processes. So it's important that this issue will create awareness so that this issue is mainstreamed from the beginning and that the researchers who are conducting the assessment of the issue make sure that they use an action-oriented approach so that they understand why is that an issue in that country. So as to come up with actionable recommendations that will be put in the law, but also in the law implementation, I think this is for me what I can recommend to take care. Thank you, Justine, for that takeaway. And closely related to that, Nana, what can be done to make the challenges informal wives in land formalization campaigns yeah, more visible? What can be done to make it more visible? How can we mainstream this cross-cutting issue to land formalization projects? Thank you. So I agree to what Justine and Julia have said, but in addition to that, I want to add that it's important to understand those of us who are actors trying to develop and implement interventions. It's important to appreciate the fact that land rights in itself is not homogeneous. There are different types of land rights and the different types of land rights when it's well understood helps for us to be able to advocate for the right type of solutions for women. As I mentioned in the case of Ghana, there's a particular type of land right called the interdisciplinary interest. It's a very peculiar type of land rights. There are others. So if I'm advocating for women in such unions, if I'm able to hone in on the different types of rights and the specific opportunities within these different types, it makes it very practical and it will make it possible to really centralize the whole conversation with the context of these different types of land rights. I also want to say that we need to advocate for policies that recognizes the different types of rights, especially the type of rights that women in such informal unions hold because that is what will enhance the work we do. If we try to advocate and promote them in the spaces we work and the spaces and the rights we advocate for are not found in the national legislation or policies, it will be very limiting and therefore we need to work towards that. And the third thing I want to also mention is that I think it's important for us to recognize that we can always advocate for but it's also important to move to the point where women themselves also are supported to advocate for themselves. And so I would also suggest that in most of the interventions we implement, we need to find space to create avenues where women in a more sustainable basis consolidate information and guidance on a day-to-day basis so that a woman doesn't have to wait for a project to come before they get sensitized, before they get trained but that arrangement is institutionalized within the local communities where a woman can work in and ask questions about her land rights so that she can get the needed advice and guidance on how she can work towards protecting their own land rights. Thank you. Thank you so much, Nana. And thank you everyone. A big thank you to all our panelists for the discussion. We've covered a lot of ground and we have also a lot of questions from the audience so we will turn to those now. We will also be asking participants to complete a brief survey before you leave the board right now and we will include or maybe have included already the link in the chat. So let's dive in right away. Our first question is for Justine. For Lentenja, do things play out for women in customary regimes in a similar way? Sorry, I didn't hear the first part of the question. Can you repeat for me, please? Yeah, of course, of course. So regarding Lentenja, the question is if things play out for women in customary regimes in a similar way as for women in informal settings, in informal marriage-like settings. Thank you. If I understand the question, informal marriages in all systems, so also in customary, it's not different from customary tenure arrangements. So you'll find informal marriages in countries like Rwanda where you have private land ownership but also in countries like Liberia where you have customary land ownership. So it's in both contexts and that's why I mentioned that it's important that we contextualize the issues because it's not the same everywhere you go. So informal marriages under customary tenure, customary tenure in some countries is formalized. So for example, Liberia, they have both statutory and customary marriage and outside those statutory and customary marriages, you also have informal marriages. Under customary marriages, dowry must be paid. There are conditions to formalize marriage under customary marriage, but there are also conditions to formalize marriage under statutory marriage. So you can find informal marriages in both systems. Or you can also read my blog on dowry in Liberia. It's online. If you Google my name at Google dowry, it will come up. It will give you an idea on what I'm explaining. Thank you. Thank you, Justine. And I will see, we have another question for Nana. The question is how prevalent are informal marriages in rural African settings? Or is it more prevalent in urban areas in the context of African countries? You find it in both urban and rural communities in Ghana, but it is predominant in rural areas because of the farming activity. So most of the time, the men bring such women in to be part of the labor that is to work on the farm. And what usually happens is that, you see, it starts as friendship and supporting each other. And it evolves into et cetera relationship. And by the time they become aware of themselves, then there is already a child or children and a continue. So then the woman has no option because this woman has a child with this man. And even though the man has not gone to see the family to perform the necessary customary rights or to do any legal registration processes to make it formal, then the woman becomes stuck with this man and has nowhere to go. I saw in one of the comments in the chat that in some communities or in some countries, the men decide to leave the union in that informal state or so that the women will continue to submit to the men and become obedient to them. And it's the same in Ghana. So the man would, because you are now having children with him, the man then decides to keep you in that situation so that you will be under his control and you will not have any opportunity to advance yourself in any way and so on. And it's very unfortunate. So for us, what we think is that in addition to advocating for the rights of such women in unions like that, there are other complementary interventions that will support the women to empower them and provide them skills that they can use to also advance themselves economically and things like that. Thank you, Lana. I will say that I have another question for Laura or maybe Jen. What protections or advocacy tools may be implored to protect women in informal marriage who invest in family land during this or breakups with their spouses? I think this is, this is Jen. Hello. I think that this is actually a question that gets to the crux of the problem, which is that in most cases, when there's a breakup of an informal marriage, there really is no remedy. And so in some cases, like in Columbia, there are some countries that have laws that do try to protect people, when there's a dissolution of a union. But as we mentioned earlier, and as some of the panelists have also mentioned, these informal marriages, whatever we call them are seldom registered. So then there's a whole process, a whole bureaucratic process for people to go through to have their union registered, kind of post facto, very difficult, almost never happens. So the fact is at this point anyway, very unlikely that that would happen. What can we do to change that? I think we have to go through again, sort of systematically those six dimensions and look first at the laws and policies, and then from there go to regulations and raising awareness. And just the big one is really raising awareness of what rights people have and should have in informal marriages, beginning with women themselves, beginning with communities. So yeah, thank you for the question. Thank you, Dan. A question for Patricia. Could you address the role of judges in charge of land rights to often reproduce patriarchal tenure ideas that do not recognize women? Yeah. I think that in Brazil, back many years ago, we had like, if a case went to the court, it was, of course, it was the justice, the justice in Brazil is white, is men, is patriarchal, and racist. So you'd get 98% in favor of men. So yeah, it is very, it's a huge process, but now look, there is a difference right now in our legislation because it's up to the municipality to perform the land regularization. It's not a huge process that goes to the, let's say to the judiciary. It can be done quite quickly and it recognized the right of the people living on the land. And I think that's very important also to highlight that land relates to a lot of questions, not just the right to stay and we are talking about many generations. We are talking about the economy of care. We are talking about having land titles for life and to transfer our experience that gave us this result. But I think that's very important to also think that lands related, women's land rights relates also to climate change. And we are talking about carrying water, to food security, to many other things that we are not even considering in this process. So it's important to really make a advocacy to change the laws as we did in Brazil. This new law is fantastic, but it goes to the local level and the mayor. And there is one aspect that I think that's very important to highlight. If the beneficiaries and let's say the communities, they write a petition to the mayor, he has the obligation to perform, it's a mandatory process. He has the obligation to perform the land regularization. So takes the judiciary from the equation. And as I said, it's very good because it's close to the community. Thank you very much. Thank you, Patricia. I have another interesting question. This time for Huya, is there from your experience, is there support among former or primary wives for formalizing informal spouses' rights to land? Thank you, Anne. It has to go through a judge. So it's pretty difficult to say in which role will be the first or the second wife. I think they do before the Colombian law have the same rights, but you need to take into account that for informal marriage to have property effects, it has to be at least two years of a consolidated relationship. So it's often to women looking for, protect the rights, but also their children. So a judge has to step in, even though you may find agreements, you never know if people can find a way of solving it in order for them to have the same rights recognized by law, you have to go to a court ruling. So it's outside of the formalization process. It has to go through a civil law and to acquire the, not only the land rights, but all the rights as well, set up in the court ruling. So it goes beyond the formalization land tenure process. Thank you. Very interesting. Thank you. Another question for Justine. How much can we expect from the government? For instance, even if it is stated in the policies that spouses formal and informal should be in the title and they don't implement it, there is really no cost to them. And most women are not often not organized. Hold on, I will skip some parts here. So the question is basically how much can we expect from the governments to actually implement their policies or progressive policies? Thank you very much. That is a very good question because at the end of the day, if any issues to be addressed, it requires the government's buying because most of the issues we deal with in the land rights sector relates to systemic issues. And the systemic issues means that we have to tackle both policies. For example, in the case of Rwanda, starting from the constitution, the constitution only allows one man, one wife marriage. So to address that within the land law is impossible unless we go back to the constitution and change the constitution. So these kinds of complexities of the police and the laws, the contradictions within the laws of the lack of protection within different laws, whether family laws, land laws and the mega laws like the constitution requires government's commitment and understanding of this issue. The government of Rwanda tried to address this issue by encouraging communal marriages to the extent that the government paid whatever was necessary to register these marriages because of its impacts. But that has not solved the issue. Instead, informal marriages are increasing. So the only solution to this is to protect this category of women's land rights just as the other forms of marital unions that exist in the country. It's the only North Star to sort of in this program. Other factors might not help, but it requires, like we said, funds. The government allocate funds to do that and it requires commitment to adapt the policy but also to change at the people level, to change the attitudes, the behavior and even where need be, punish illicit activities because there will always be people within the community that are not going to respect those roles. Thank you. I don't know if I answered the question. Thank you very much. Thank you, Justine. Two last questions. One for Jen and Lauren. Does the concept of informal differ from place to place? Like for example, polygamous marriages are common in many parts of Africa but they are not necessarily defined or seen as informal. And I'm sorry, I only heard half of your question. No problem, I can repeat it. So does the concept of informal differ from place to place? So for example, polygamous marriages are common in many parts of Africa but they're not necessarily seen as informal or they're not necessarily informal. Yes, that's a very good question and that's exactly right. So we're talking about something really different in the Latin American context where polygamy is not recognized in any country and in an African context where some countries recognize polygamy and others like Justine said don't in Rwanda. But even where polygamy is recognized, there are and legal, there are still issues with how we divide rights up among different spouses for example or the fact that many people who come into polygamous marriages whether they're the first wife, second wife or third wife or it'll be the case in Liberia for example aren't actually meeting the requirements of formalization in a customary sense. So maybe a bride price isn't completely paid or something like that. And so there's no actual recognition even though there's a legal recognition of the possibility of polygamy, the particular relationship with one wife is not recognized. And so then we have really the same problem. Thank you very much for clarifying. And I would just quickly add that very quickly just to say that this sort of highlights all these variety of questions of does it, how does it happen here and how does it happen there? It's precisely why we as GLA are coming out with this topic and we wanna hear all about what everybody's doing out there because that contextualization of we're all seeing that there's some kind of higher risk and there's always some kind of informality whatever the context, whatever the country. So I think that's where the key of that should be our next step as researchers is to say, okay, well, this is my country this is my context. What does it look like for these informal spouses and how can I inform more about how it works here? That would be my addition. Thank you. That's a great takeaway. Thank you, Laura. And one last question from the audience to Patricia, what source, what data sources would be useful to shed light on the issue? Like could something like, for example, like prindex incorporate this point of view in the future? What do you... Yes, I think that we need some more data. As I said, we have, you use many sources of data and I think that prindex is one source. We also have used the cadastra platform it's a foundation, it's a partner of spasso feminist. So we are putting all the data in this platform. And then we can, after the project, we can cross the data and in the groups all kinds of things like, you know, like what is the marital status, how many children, how many people live in the house, the size of the house. So I think that data is very important for the project implementation, but also we are looking forward to see the changes. And we are talking, when we are talking about 85% of the land titles going for women, we want to see in five, in three, five years, a big change in this community, you know, in the women's capacity to really change their relationship, the power, shifting from men to women. So I think that we have to collect data now and we have to keep collecting data to see the difference, the impacts of a project like we are doing in Bonito, where there is a real, real change in land title. Concept, you know, thank you. Thank you, Patricia. I said it's the last question, but I got in one more really interesting question. So for Dan and Laura and I would like to pose it. Are there any examples of good laws and efforts made in other countries to secure the land rights of informal spouses and single women? Yes, I would actually say, that's a great question. And I would actually say that Colombia is one of the best, has one of the best legal frameworks of any country for protecting the rights of informal spouses, particularly in the context of land reform. Well, in any context, but also in land reforms of land registration. The issues again are, how does that actually play out in practice? But I would look to Colombia. Thank you. Thank you very much, Jen, thank you. Yeah, I can only say what a great discussion this has been. Let me now ask each of the panelists to share any final, very brief thoughts as we're coming to an end. And I would give the word first to Nana. Thank you very much, Jen. And yes, I agree with you. It's been a very wonderful session that we've had sharing and hearing from the audience. My last word on the subject matter is that, we always talk about the women's land rights issue. And we have always said that women are not a homogeneous group, but we have hardly spent time discussing different categories of women and how they experience the dimensions of the land tenure challenges. And I think this is just the beginning of the conversation, having picked on informal wives. There are many other categories that need attention. And so the more we learn about what we are beginning to discuss on informal wives, it also opens up opportunity for us to learn about the other categories of women and how they are impacted by land rights and land rights formalization. So there's more work ahead for us to do. There is more opportunity to support and I think there's more opportunities to learn together. Thank you. Thank you so much. Patricia, what is your final sort of takeaway from today? I think that you cannot think, we cannot think just about Brazil, we cannot think just about the Colombia, we have to think as a group. And we have to think, take into consideration the situation that women face, whatever it is in Mozambique, in Senegal, if it is a pastoralist or normal women. So I think that we have to build collective action. And the feminist land platform is exactly this, we unite force between different countries in different regions to collectively advocate and not just advocate, but also raise our voice to bring gender justice to the table, considering that it's not just gender justice as a land, but also in terms of climate change, in terms of economical justice, in terms of food security. So I think that it's a call for uniting the voices and doing something together. It's not up just to one country. Yeah, I think that that's what we need. Really change, occupy the spaces, the global spaces with our voices and our analysis to unfold this inequality that women face. Thank you very much. Beautifully said. Thank you, Patricia and Julia, over to you. Thank you, Anne and all. Well, I just want to say that denying land to women who have the right to own it is gender-based violence. We are not far from other kinds of violence, such as sexual violence, physical violence, psychological violence. So we need to bring together all that we know about land and all that we know about gender-based violence to have better responses to women because we can research, we can advocate, but actually real women are out there having their rights violated. So we need to integrate land discussions on gender issues as well, and to link it with gender-based violence to have better protections measured for those women. So that's it. Thank you so much, everyone. Thank you for your end. Yeah, last, I will hand over to justine. What is your final takeaway from today? Yeah, thank you very much. Again, I really want to appreciate and to congratulate Global Ad Alliance and the land portal for bringing up this issue. For me, it's just the beginning of digging out the invisible categories of women and men in the land reform processes. And to the extent that we can dig out these invisible people in these processes, they better the outcomes. So it's contextual. It requires money and funds. Those are my final remarks. Thank you so much. Thank you so, so much. A big thank you to our panelists and presenters from GLA. Finally, I will give the word to Kevin Barcel, the co-founder and director of programs of the Global Land Alliance. Okay, thank you, Anne. Hello, everyone. This is Kevin Bartholme, the director of programs at Global Land Alliance. GLA would like to thank everyone for their interest in this invisible and excluded topic, in particular the panelists for providing their personal perspective in country context. And especially the participants in today's webinar, the chat was full of great ideas and thoughtful reactions. Land portal had over 580 registered participants, which is a clear indication of the interest and importance of this topic. GLA plans to continue this research with the next step being field data collection in selected countries starting in Columbia and in Dominican Republic in this year. As we continue, we'd like to invite interested organizations and researchers to join with Global Land Alliance to move this invisible and excluded topic into the mainstream of the land sector dialogue. If you're interested in collaborating with GLA on this topic, please visit our website at globallandalliance.org or write to info at globallandalliance.org. Thank you so much again for your participation. We really appreciate your participation and excellent engagement and have a good day or good evening. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us here today. We appreciate your participation engagement. Bye-bye. Thank you everyone. Bye. Bye. Thank you. Bye everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye. Thank you everyone.