 Is it time? Should we start? Hello, and welcome to this webinar. My name is Renee Joverelli, and I'm the co-founder of Resource Equity and Senior Gender Advisor and Lawyer. I have over 25 years of experience working on gender issues related to land tenure and customer and legal property rights, and I'm still learning so very happy to be here. In a moment, we'll be introducing our three main panelists and hearing from three West African countries, Liberia, Ghana, and Nigeria on developments in women's land rights under customary tenure. Before that, we'll be introducing a newly published set of country portfolios, an online knowledge piece developed by Land Portal, which provides a summary of the land governance situation in a number of countries. First of all, a few logistical notes. This webinar is being recorded and will be available later for consultation on the Land Portal website and on your YouTube channel. Following three rounds of questions to our panelists, we will have 30 minutes to address your questions. Please use the question and answer feature to pose your questions. You can also use the chat if you want others to see your questions. So let's introduce the webinar. The webinar today takes a deeper look into women's land rights and customary tenure. As in many other parts of the world, women work on land in most of West Africa, but do not have secure rights or access to the land they use. In all three countries we will hear from today, land is passed down from male to male, and women do not inherit ancestral land under customary law. At the same time, women tend to be largely underrepresented in decision-making positions at the local or national level as a result of patriarchal norms, lack of knowledge and confidence, as well as their heavy workloads, leading to time poverty. The importance of women's tenure security and its socioeconomic benefits have gained increasing awareness and momentum in West Africa over the past decade, and in Ghana and Liberia, the land law provides some positive steps forward, creating a space for change. The objective of this webinar, however, is to highlight ongoing tenure and securities for women beyond statutory law. We want to explore new ways towards equitable practices of land tenure and compare positive case examples, and we want to identify major challenges in promoting inclusive measures. For some further perspectives, I'd like to introduce speakers for today. I'll start with Anne Hennings, who is Landportals Local Knowledge Engagement Coordinator for West Africa. Anne has written the country portfolios for Ghana, Liberia, and Nigeria and will present them to you in a moment. Anne is also a postdoc research fellow at the Peace Academy Rhineland-Pellanted University of Landau. She holds a PhD in peace and conflict studies and has worked on land and resource issues for over 10 years, both in sub-Saharan Africa and in Southeast Asia. Our panel will be composed of three persons. Firstly, Akua Apuka Pritwim, who is an associate professor at the Department of Labor and Human Resource Studies, University of Cape Coast Ghana. In previous years, she served as the director of the Center for Research, Advocacy and Documentation. Her teaching and research cover various topics, including gender issues and development philosophy and theory and women's labor status in the informal economy. The second panelist is Aruwakemi Udo, who is a researcher at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Covenant University, Nigeria. Her PhD focused on the effectiveness of international conventions on women's rights, protecting their rights to property in Ogden State, Nigeria. She has published a number of articles on women's rights to property in peer-reviewed journals. Last but not least, our third speaker is Justine Avusa, who serves as a senior land policy and gender advisor at Landesa. She's a lawyer specializing in law and development and holds a doctor of philosophy and sociology, gender and women's studies. Justine has more than two decades of experience in the fields of land rights, gender women's rights, social justice and others in sub-Saharan Africa context. Now we're gonna have a poll. We would like you to conduct a very quick poll so that we know who's attending the webinar. There are two questions in the poll and some options will shortly come up on your screen. The first question is, in which region are you based? And the second question, which sector do you represent? Do we have the results yet? Okay, in which region are you based? 18% from West Africa, 16% from other sub-Saharan countries, 1% from Near East and North Africa, 7% Asia and Pacific, 25% North, South and Central America and 34% Europe and Central Asia. Which sector do you represent? Government 7%, civil society 31%, private sector 6%, international organizations 21%, universities and knowledge institutes 28% and other 8%. So welcome to everyone, we're really happy to have you. So now we will move on and I'll pass the floor to Anne Hemings who will tell us a bit more about the countries which are the focus of our discussion today on women's land rights and customary tenure. Yeah, thank you Rene. This webinar is part of the Land Portals Country Insights Initiative. So yeah, over the past year, the Land Portal has been compiling a series of country portfolios that summarize history and development of a country's land governance system and that analyzes key elements of the system such as the land legislation, trans and land use, how women access and control land investments and more. The portfolios shall act as an entry point to learn about a new country, suggesting further resources for deeper exploration and linking to relevant news reports, blocks and datasets. To have a look at them, you can go to the Land Portal website and click on the tap countries. This month, we have published portfolios on Ghana, Liberia and Nigeria. And over the next few minutes, I would like to give a few reflections on these three countries as an introduction. Nigeria is by far the largest, was a population of almost 200 million people and was over 250 ethnic groups and more than 500 languages spoken. Nigeria is also home to Lagos which might become the world's first city, exceeding 100 million inhabitants. At the other end of the spectrum, Liberia as the smallest country was less than 5 million people. Nigeria and Ghana both endured periods of British and also German rule. Ghana was in Sub-Saharan Africa, Ghana was the first to achieve independence from European rule in 1957. And Nigeria followed a few years later and became a sovereign state in 1960. Liberia, on the other hand, declared independence from the private American colonization society as early as 1847. Talking about the legal land system in each country, all of them, Liberia, Ghana and Nigeria are highly pluralistic and acknowledging statutory laws, customary tenure and in Nigeria's case also Islamic law. In Liberia, statutory law is primarily applied in the urban coastal area and customary law basically in the rest of the country. Similarly, lineage is at its center stage of land tenure in Ghana. So while land is a family or community owned, customary governments called stools in the south and skins in the north administer about 80% of all land with chief acting as custodians. In Nigeria, land is vested, all land is vested in the state and customary law and Sharia law in the north are prevalent in rural but also urban areas. As in Liberia and Ghana, rural areas turn to their chiefs or amiers on land related matters. In all three countries, along with the customary authorities who act as a custodians of the land, lineage and also family heads of land owning families have a say in land governance. There have been various attempts at land reform in all countries aiming to protect customary land rights and enhance tenure security. In Liberia, the long awaited land rights that was passed in 2018, celebrated as a landmark law, it formally recognizes and protects customary land and women's rights to land. Similarly, Ghana's new land bill was passed just in mid 2020. I mean, it's supposed to consolidate and harmonize the existing 166 land related laws that exist in the country. And it's also supposed to further strengthen customary tenure. In Nigeria, then president, Goodluck Jonathan acknowledged the need for reforms and reconstituted the presidential technical committee on land reform 10 years ago. In terms of land use, Ghana is the most urbanized country with about 56% of the population living in cities. In Nigeria and Liberia, the population basically lives equally in rural and urban areas. However, next to artisan and mining, agriculture remains the most important livelihood source in all three countries, employing about two thirds of the Nigerian populace, half of the population in Ghana and still 43% in Liberia. In all three countries, large scale agribusinesses and mining operations have had adverse impacts for residents and the environment and have led over time to contestation and in some cases also violence. And both Northern Ghana and Northern Nigeria, pestilence practice transhumans seasonally. In the final area, I would like to mention leads us to the main topic of today's webinar. While the constitutions in all three countries provide women and men with equal rights in accessing property, women's access to and also decision-making power over land and resources have remained highly vulnerable and limited in practice. The exception here is Liberia, which due to its recently passed Land Rights Act provides stronger protection for women's land rights and strengthens also female participation in local land management committees. However, inconsistencies and also patriarchal customs make this progressive legal framework very difficult to apply. For instance, women's access to justice in rural areas to enforce their rights is limited. Also the management of joint property with spouses remains of course obviously highly problematic in the patriarchal society. A similar picture unfolds in Ghana where only 10% are female landholders and women usually have only secondary access through their spouses, brothers or fathers or maybe even sons. Similarly, maintaining good relations with male family members is very important actually in all countries and in Nigeria too. Here women are in Nigeria, women are actually regarded as their spouses property and as such are not entitled to own lands themselves according to customary practices. The Sharia legal system in northern Nigeria on the other hand provides women with some more rights. In Nigeria, there were various initiatives to promote gender equality and also to strengthen women's land rights such as the national gender policy but the implementation has remained weak so far. Thank you so much Ann. Our first question is what are the key obstacles for women's access to land and tenure security in West Africa? What role do customary law and practices play? We'd like to start with Akua to tell us a little bit about the women's tenure situation in Ghana. Thank you very much Renee and thanks also to the group for having me to share some of the experiences that one has had as a researcher and also as an activist. Now Ann really covered the major issues that first in terms of tenure issues in Ghana we are talking about how people get land and once they also get the land what rights they have. Ann has spoken extensively about the legal plural system which means that communal norms and practices govern about 80% of the land that we have in Ghana both for women and men. But then the key customary issues is first of all how do people get land? And when they get the land what kinds of rights do they have on other things on the land? What right do they have to make changes on the land and can they also decide who they want to give their land to and who they cannot? And all these are determined by customary norms and practices. Now talking about West Africa one thing we have in common is the fact that most of agricultural production is peasant based. And so this makes the household a production unit. So this brings me to my second point which is talking about women end and where they spend their adult working life. I have made mention of the fact that most rural women spend their adult working life in marriages not just around men but everybody, most women. And therefore the household then becomes a production unit. As a production unit it means then that women who and we talk about two modes of access to land the patrilineal system and the matrilineal system. People have said that the matrilineal system is superior to the patrilineal system but we should note that the matrilineal system is not matriarchal, it's still patriarchal and property and office is passed on through men to men. So once women move into marriages they lose access if they are within the matrilineal system. They lose access to their land holding groups, land that they could get from their land holding groups and therefore they get secondary access because the land they can access is through their husbands. Now again women's position within their marriage also structures what kind of land they can get. Do they have children, what kind of children do they have are they males or females and their health of their marriage? Are they divorced, are they separated, are they widowed? And so you find out that within their own natal families, households, they are viewed as transient members and then within their marital homes also they are viewed as more or less strangers because none of the customary laws and practices give married women the same rights of access to others. Within the patrilineal systems also we talk about daughters and their rights and when we're within the matrilineal system we also talk about other children. Then I also make mention of land hunger and spoke a lot about the operation of mining, both legal and illegal, both formal and informal and the number of agricultural land within rural areas. Our ban in Ghana is the amount of gold we have under the land and so a number of rural land also is being turned more and more to artisanal gold mining which yields quicker benefits than agriculture. And then of course Ghana is highly urbanized but this high urbanization is led by almost nearly uncontrolled urban spraw and this also puts a lot of pressure on land that is available to land holding groups and land then that can be given to members of the land holding group. So you find out that there's a lot of migration by farming communities, farming households and migration also then introduces further insecurities within the access to land. So people can access land through renting, through sharecropping and through hiring and most of the land holding communities are reluctant to give land to women on their own but then they are very happy to give land to men who are married. So then the whole point about married women and their position within marriage and access to land gets also reinforced by all these customary laws and practices. I think I'll end here and let others address the issue. Thank you, Akua. I'm guessing that this will be a common theme today that when lands in demand and money's involved women are disadvantaged. Let's get some more insights into women's rights in Nigeria from Aloha Kemi. Okay, thank you very much, Rene. Well, the experiences that Akua has mentioned are not quite different from what we have in Nigeria. In Nigeria, we have the obstacles that are hindering women from accessing land or ensuring their tenure security include the customary law. In fact, that's the first obstacle, the customary law. And this manifests in marriage, it manifests in divorce and inheritance. Now, for instance, in marriage, in the family section, there are incidences where a woman actually wants to buy a parcel of land and husband thinks it's unnecessary because he's providing the basic needs of the family. And he sees it, he and his family members view the woman's desire to own a parcel of land as an act of misbehavior or an act of trying to equalize with the man and that is frowned at. And then you'll find out that she's not able to do that because the family, the extended family now which is guided by patriarchal beliefs believe that women should not own land. So we have constant, then when it comes to divorce, when the couple have an issue, the couple, yeah, when the couple has an issue, factors such as how many children does the woman have? What kind of children? Yes, what kind? All children are, I mean, everyone, you begin to see some ideas that are around male preference or son preference, you know, guiding the distribution of inheritance. And if she's not able to provide the son in the family, she's disinherited. If she has only females, she's disinherited. So customary law also rules in that dimension. Then even within her natural family, it's still the same thing. The father believes that familial land should be handed over to the son because he can be entrusted with the family property unlike the woman upon marriage goes with that family property and they lose access to that. So customary law represents a major obstacle and sometimes it overrides statutory laws in Nigeria. Then another obstacle is the issue of land grabbing, which is the first full entry eviction and occupation of landed properties by unlawful individuals. We find some individuals within the community and this is very, very common in communal lands. You'll find some disgruntled elements as it were, invading a particular property, sometimes chasing out the owners of the land, being aggressive and employing different means of violence to ensure that the owner of the land does not carry out any activity on that land. It's usually very violent. And so because of the level of aggression, you know, this discourages women from even wanting to acquire communal land because they feel that they cannot match force with force. And so you'll find them sometimes having to go through a male relative to help them in acquiring the land, you know, negotiating deals on the parcel of land. So that's also a major issue. Even though it is frowned at, some states in Nigeria have actually enacted laws that frown against land grabbing. You still find out very rampant in rural areas. It's something that is peculiar in the rural areas. The third obstacle will be lack of awareness on constitutional rights. Now in Nigeria, we have the federal constitution that guarantees every citizen access to land in Nigeria. But then you now find a situation where many women are not even aware of this. They are discriminated against in the rural communities, but they are not aware that they act as a citizen of Nigeria. They have a right to immovable property. We know that education is the key to unlocking human rights. But if you are not aware of what the constitution provides for you, you cannot enforce it. So that's a major issue, both the federal constitution and even the land use act guarantees every Nigerian, whether male or female, the right to own immovable property. For most women in the rural communities in particular are not aware of this. And those that are even aware, you know, for some reasons, they find it difficult to pursue and fight for their rights. Usually as a result of fear of intimidation from the family, there's this idea that why will I take this person to the court? It's not right. You're a woman. You're not supposed to pursue this. This is for your brother. This is for your husband. So lack of awareness or constitutional rights represents another major obstacle. Then the last would be the plurality of the Nigerian legal system. Now, the plurality of the Nigerian legal system actually presents a setback in women's access to land and even other forms of property. And the institution of marriage in Nigeria is carried out under different legal systems which are guided independently by customary laws, religious and statutory laws. The laws that guide marriage in under the Sharia law, for instance, is different from even contradicts what the statutory law states. Under the statutory law, a married woman has access to property or land as its way. But then you find out that in the religious laws, she only has access to a certain percentage of inheritance or rights and all of that. So the plurality of the Nigerian legal system presents a setback in the interception of these legal systems actually creates even a gap in the implementation of certain policies that protect women in Nigeria. Thank you once again. Thank you very much. You make a really important point that women need to know their legal rights to exercise them. I think we see this all over the world. Let's hear from Justine about obstacles, women's access to land and tenure security in Liberia. Justine. Much really. Good morning, good afternoon everyone. Yeah, it's a pleasure for me to be able to to speak about these things. And just like my colleagues have said honestly, the issues are very similar, if not the same in the three countries or across sub-Saharan Africa, I will not commit myself to North Africa because I'm not experienced in that area, but across South Saharan Africa, I think the issues are the same. I'm originally from Rwanda and I can say that everything almost you're talking about here is the same in Rwanda, but I will focus on Liberia. And the other thing that I wanted to talk about is that as we are all here, I can see there are 168 people following this forum. I like to say that this is about people, it's not only about women, but also women's dependence on the countries at large. And this is a serious issue. So to begin with, I want to start with a story of one Liberian woman called Rita who benefited from the trainings that are conducted by Landesa and FCI. FCI is the Foundation for Community Initiative. It's a local NGO. So the story of Rita goes, when Rita's father died, she was told by the town chief in Bonye that she could not inherit his land because the tradition of the town only grants land and other properties to male children. Rita and her sisters, who are not given houseports of farmland, and later they got married and moved out of the community. After Rita's husband died, she had nowhere to go, but only to return to her farmland. On her return, still she was not given land until there was a training in her community. And then after learning about her land rights, Rita went ahead and asserted and claimed her rights to her father's land. And when she claimed for her land rights, then she was granted the rights to her father's land. I cannot speak to what happened to Rita's sister because they are still married and away from that land. But that's the question that I would pose to everyone who is here. Should women only acquire land from their biological natto families only because their marriages have failed or their husbands have died and they cannot inherit from their husbands family as my two colleagues have already said that a woman is seen as if she's in transition. She's a stranger either from her marital family and her family because they all see her as moving. She doesn't belong anywhere. So that's the question I want to leave for there. So coming back to the topic today, I saw the word root and that gave me some kind of level of thinking, root. Root to women's, root obstacle to women's land rights. And it reminded me something I studied in primary three which talked about a tough root, that deep root. The root by which other roots grow. And to me, that is patriarchy. Again, the other speakers have talked a lot about that that I'm not going to define or go deep into what patriarchy is, but really this tough root patriarchy. When you look at it, that's why other issues that women face relating to land rights, relating to property rights, whether in marriage, whether in their own biological families, it's all rooted into that, whether it's the lack of education and everything. So coming back strictly to Liberia and I'll run through this quickly because it's the same and similar to what my colleagues have said. Again, the issue is patriarchy and patriarity. Forgive me for not being able to say that very well. So literally inheritance of family, proper and land goes through the so-called representative of the family. So family tree goes by the male children almost across Africa. So because women are not seen to carry that family tree, then they don't inherit that property because they are seen as if, when they inherit that property or acquire property from their families, then that property is going to benefit their husband's family. So that is one issue. So that issue follows them also into marriage, like again, my colleague has said, I'm not going to say that. So in Liberia again, like it was said in Nigeria, women are traditionally perceived as property. There's a popular slogan which says women are property. How can they inherit property? So literally a woman is seen as a property and a property to the future husband who marry her. And this is tied to the traditions of dowry and all those kinds of things. And when you look at marriage in Liberia, they have both, they have a dual system, the tutoring marriage and customary marriage. And they lost somehow somewhere, recognize there's also de facto unions. But then the de facto unions have no connotation or have no explanation of how property within that relationship is shared. So when you look and again today with modernity, I'm running through this quickly because it's exactly the same as what my colleagues have said. So today because of modernity in Liberia, we find that the young people getting married, they have these lucrative introductory marriages, literally the customary marriage. And according to the law, it's the first celebrated marriage that is binding. So literally women in statutory marriage have equal rights to property as their husbands. But then because the young people now are celebrating introduction, dowry marriage, they are not even aware that the moment you do that before you register your marriage under law, then that is what is binding your marriage. So anyway, so it's all about patriarchy. And it's the patriarchy that forest women into marriage, into inheritance. And so moving away from marriage and inheritance, the gender relations within the domestic relations circles, there is the issue of women's absence in land governance. That is a huge obstacle. Again, it has connotations in patriarchy. But then because women are not there, their issues are not represented. And again, other women don't see themselves being able to report the cases that they face. And this also links to access to justice, whether it's informal or formal justice, which is very tiring, which again is also gender biased where land related issues and family property issues, decisions are made per the custom. So while the law is in place as unsaid, they still lack of understanding and awareness of that law. So by and large, the traditional system is still working more than the application of the law. So that's another big issue. Having no women leadership, then there is the big issue of gender roles and gender division of labor, which is again connected to the top route. So because women have so many roles, the triple gender roles that most of you are aware of, they keep women in Liberia so much in the family. They do farming, taking care of the elderly, taking care of children, taking care of the husband, and then also selling food in the market. So they hardly find time to pursue other development opportunities that will help them to compete or even to understand their rights. Sometimes they don't participate in meetings in public. They are not even expected to speak in public in the presence of men. And again, that's not in the whole country, but in the larger part of the country. So women are still struggling with those gender relational issues, patriarchal of the right to speak in public, the right to speak in front of men who represents the family. Then the issue of concessions or which has completely evicted people from land in big communities in Liberia, all these issues and who makes decisions on land. Then inaccessibility of women in Liberia, the majority of women in rural Liberia are not educated. So that speaks a lot again. Them being not educated, they don't, together with gender roles, they lack time and understanding of information and then their self-esteem when they attend meetings sometimes. They have in Liberia what they call the small English. So when women come to meetings and they can't speak that small English, sometimes it's even a barrier for them to express themselves. And lastly, I'll talk about the newness and the limited understanding of gender equality. Okay, sorry about that. Yeah. Lastly, I want to talk about the newness and the limited understanding of gender equality and women's land rights. All the land rights act that you heard about. This is still a big obstacle in Liberia. There's a rigorous move to create awareness around the land rights act. But then this is coming at the backdrop where people are not yet aware of why is this important? Why should we give land to women? Is it an imposition actually from Monrovia by the government and the civil society organizations? So again, the understanding of why this is important. Sometimes when we do this work, we forget that the system that is in place has been, it's a way of life that people have lived for generations. So how do we even introduce these rights to them once they are passed into law? So again, going back to the root, the root is that unless we understand the root and how that root came about, then tackling it becomes easier and probably leads to transformative impact. So that's what I want to end with, saying that the lack of understanding of gender, do we have the good ground to talk about these rights within those communities? And then the lack of understanding of the rights themselves that they are provided by the law. But when we talk about law also again, it's not just the land rights act. It's also domestic relations laws, family laws, taxation laws, land-based investment laws. How do all these laws come together to become an obstacle to women's land rights and just pursuing one? Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Justine. I forgot to say in the beginning, there'll be three questions and then there will be 30 minutes at the end for your questions. So we'll go now to the second question. And that is, what are the latest developments of women's land rights in your country? And we're gonna start with Aloha Kemi in Nigeria. Thank you very much. I would like to start by stressing that in Nigeria, anything that has to do with tenure security is not gender-specific in the country. Nigeria is, and the reason is not far-fetched. Nigeria is deeply patriarchal. And when it comes to women's issues, we, the government tends to be a bit slow in some cases only responsive in ensuring that the Nigerian women are protected. And however, we have statutory laws that protect women's rights to land in Nigeria. And the first is the Federal Constitution, the 1999 Federal Constitution of Nigeria, which guarantees every citizen the rights to immovable property in Nigeria. It draws no distinction on the gender or the sex right now, religion, age, and all of that guarantees. As long as you're a Nigerian citizen, you have the right to own land, including women in the rural areas. Because when we talk about land rights within the Nigerian context, I think those that are at the losing end or those that are more disadvantaged are women in the rural areas. Women in the urban areas are not so disadvantaged because of the factor of education. Many women are educated in the urban areas and as such know what to do in order to ensure their rights. So now, going by that, the Federal Constitution of Nigeria guarantees everyone access to land. Now we also have the Land Use Act of 1978. That Land Use Act, as I mentioned earlier, the Nigerian government is not really so specific about women owning property or women owning land. They are more interested in procedures of land administration, titling, and all of that bringing all interests of the land and investing it in the government. That's what the Land Use Act is actually about. And so in that particular act, there is no difference as to whether this is a man or a woman. Once you're in Nigeria, you can have access to that and you can register the land in your name. Then we have the VAP Act, which I can consider to be the most recent, that's the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act of 2015. And that act actually prohibits any form of violence which includes forceful eviction from property. So while I mentioned that land grabbing is one of the obstacles to women's rights to land, if they know they are right, they can actually enforce it using the VAP Act as if they get a good lawyer that can fight for them. So currently, we don't really any effort right now towards protecting or ensuring tenure security has to do with all Nigerians, not women. Not women. Once you're in Nigeria, you can just say, it's not gender specific. Any law governing land in Nigeria is not gender specific. So that's the level where we are right now. Though NGOs and different activists are actually clamoring for more gender specific laws and policies that will favor the women. Thank you. Thank you. I think it's interesting that Nigeria was so early actually in guaranteeing equal rights in 1999 already, even though not specific. Next we have Justine to talk again about Liberia and what are the latest developments regarding women's land rights in Liberia. Justine? Sorry about that, yeah. I was just saying that I think Anne talked a lot about what the developments in Liberia and luckily enough, Liberia is not such a huge population like in the other two countries. So as we speak nowadays, like rigorous movement into creating awareness of this land rights act starting from the Liberia Land Authority, the civil society organizations, all going down there to explain women's land rights. Of course, not necessarily that they're everywhere and in the country, you find that what is happening today is that most of the work is concentrated in a few counties out of the 15, maybe five or six. But for those few counties where they're going like I mentioned the case of Rita is that things are changing. The law is in place now. Of course, the traditions are very conservative and really hard to go by, but things are starting to change and women are starting to speak out about their rights and even to attain them. So those are the developments that I'll talk about. Also, the country now is trying to establish local land administrative structures, but that is again, very difficult because there is lack of money, that the government doesn't have the money to do that, but development partners such as the UN and Landesa, USAID are all joining hands to support the government to make sure that this law, that many hands work together to bring into force is being implemented at the local level. So there are challenges, but at least for Liberia, I think Liberia being a small population, things are moving on. And I think that is one of the things to approach Liberia about. Okay, thank you, Justine. How about Akua? Can you talk a bit about the recent developments in Ghana? Yes, thanks Rene. Recent developments in Ghana that really are changing the land tenure system and how land is acquired and what rights has been the passage of the Land Act in last year. And this Land Act has been a whole process. We started in 1999 as part of the process of so-called enhancing discipline within land acquisition and to attract foreign direct investments. So the goals really were to remove the conflicts and we had a number of legal instruments, over 166 on land. And the idea was to bring them together and ensure that they were consistent also with other land related laws, like what are the statutory instruments that govern the land ministry and all that. And then also land administration, how it is managed. And finally also to reflect the spirit of the Ghanaian constitution, equal access, absence of discrimination. And two things that were important for this process also, were women's rights. So what are Ghana's international commitments to supporting women's rights? And finally environmental concerns. The interesting thing in this Land Act spousal acquisition of land. So the provisions that makes all landed property acquired during marriage to be owned by spouses in common. And whether it is declared or not, because I've mentioned the problematic area of matrilini and patrilini. And in both cases, when husbands that interstate, the properties they leave behind, does not devolve automatically to their wife and children. So these were issues that needed to be addressed. And also protect women, should in case their marriage fails. So then their demands as spousal should register all landed properties acquired during marriage in their joint needs. But if they do not, and they register in their own individual names, it is assumed that in so long as their marriage subsisted, it doesn't matter whether one made a direct contribution or not. So long as their marriage subsisted during the acquisition of that landed property, it to be deemed to be owned by both parties. Now, as people would say somewhere, the sweetness of the pudding is in this consumption. So what does this mean? I mean, the process towards the bail lane before parliament and all that, it involved a lot of work, activists work, trying to get parliamentarians also mainly meant to understand where this law was coming from and all that. But I have time to talk about this in response to the next question. But let me mention some of the problems that women face in acquiring land through statutory provisions. And research has shown that really the patriarchal norms that underlie the customary norms and practices that devolve land access and use also apply to formal institutions. So earlier on they have been mentioned of the fact that they tend to be male dominated and therefore they are very few men there. But patriarchy also means that women have less education than men and therefore the awareness of what their rights are is very low. And even where they are aware also how can they access these legal provisions? What legal institutions are involved and the whole legal situation also that sometimes is so unfriendly to women. The number of cases you have to file and time. And sometimes they do not have their resources. Of course there are women's rights groups that are ready to give women support. But then a lot of women are not aware of it. And then the whole notion of what a good woman is. And so if your husband should pass, a good woman should be mourning her husband and not chasing after property. And therefore a number of women then do not have the courage to also stand for their rights. Then there's a question also about a good woman also. And so when women have registered property title deeds they have done that with their husband's name because they don't want to accept the traditional authority systems in their marriages or they have even done that in the name of their male relatives and sometimes to their own disadvantage. So the efficiency concerns that underlie this bill we fear might undermine the equity issues that these provisions seek to bring. And I think that's our rest here and then hope that questions during question time might allow me to explain some of the issues. Thank you. Thank you, Akula. I will say that women activists have actually achieved quite a bit on the legal front in the last 10 years which is really exciting. And now on to implementation. So the third question, there have been some positive legal movement as we said and now we're going to talk. Oh, I'm so sorry. I forgot Justine. Justine. Please. Did I lose my, I lost my space. Sorry. Okay. Well, our third and final question refers to lessons that we can learn from positive case studies or measures. So this is my favorite part and I messed it up. We'd love to hear from Justine and Liberia about some positive movement there. In the chat room, somebody raised a very important issue of gender mainstreaming and within Liberia, I think this is something that has that we that they can show that other countries can borrow from, especially during that period when they were legislating the Land Rights Act went towards a bill. There was really very strong concerted efforts from the civil society organizations, both international and national. And during that time, that's when the Women's Land Rights Task Force was formed that brought together government, all partners working on women's rights, literally gender, not even just land. And from that, and that rigorous involvement with the process throughout the process, writing concept notes and sending messages to the government, sending representatives to the parliament when the bill was being debated and presented. I think that is something that really led to the gender sensitive law that we have today, that Liberia has today and very proud of. And within this law, it's something that I kept to the end. I didn't want to say it in the previous question. You find that the law provides for equal rights land for both men and women. It provides for equal participation in land governance for men, women and youths. It provides, it broadens community membership. Whereby you find that previously, according to custom, community membership was only reserved for, like, paternity or kind of lineage of the members of the community. So if a woman married in that community, she would only become a member if she's legally married, either dowry rate or perpetuity. Today, they don't recognize that any of the who's lived in the community for seven years plus becomes automatically a member of the community. So the majority of the women that were not members of the community previously are now members of the community on their own right, once they have lived there for seven years, plus the children of the daughters of the community, for example, a daughter married in a man, their children were never recognized as members of that community. They were always, they were always regarded as strangers. So again today, the law recognizes them. So this law is very progressive. Additionally, the government is also in the process of adopting bylaws. So those bylaws again have no choice, but to be emulated after this law. So the community will have to follow the law. So what made the change? The change is that there was regular participation in the whole process of the making of that law. Two, during the same time and currently there's been regular training, for example, the USAID project that was implemented by Tetra Tech and Landesa, together with the land authority, really worked so hard to provide evidence, because at that time there wasn't even good understanding of women's issues, land issues within Monrovia. So that law provided evidence of the issues that women were going through. And it's that evidence that helped together with conducting training of trainers, as I mentioned earlier, gender issues and women's land rights were a new thing to Liberia. So the conducting trainings and awareness raising, putting in place training manuals has really worked to move things out to the front. So that consistent gender mainstreaming at every stage, tapping into the gender dynamics, I think is what has really made the change we see today in Liberia. So it was foundational. There are many illustrative examples, but for me that was the foundation to everything. Thank you so much, Justine. Akua, are there any positive examples you can give us from Ghana? Yeah, the examples really, as I mentioned, are two specific experiences that we had, because in the process of getting the bill enacted, there had to be a bit of activist work. And this was led by the network for women's rights in Ghana, an umbrella organization. So the idea was to find out how are women navigating their tenure insecurities? What examples is this? And how can these examples be upscaled and used to deal with some of the customary restrictions that they face? And we discovered two. One that worked in the Matrilineal South, and the other that worked in the Patrilineal North. And the Matrilineal South was dealing with migrant communities. And the fact that because they rented land, one thing that I failed to mention also is a conception of women as farmers, which feeds into the secondary access to land. So women are not seen as farmers in their own rights. And whatever they produce really is to supplement what men produce. So this then feeds into even when they are making personal arrangements for land and renting land. So the tendency was to give women, when they rented land, they got it on shorter leases and could not then farm more profitable crops. So this procedure, this initiative was worked with traditional rulers and within this community, the landholders, land holding groups, and how women's access to land, women's tenure security could be enhanced. And finally, it was possible to get them to agree to enter, to transfer the oral agreement that was made during the renting into legal documents that could be signed. So it became possible for women then to renew, even though they were annual, to renew these renting arrangements. The other was the group acquisition for the Patrilineal North, where again working together with traditional authorities who wear their land holding groups, male heads, getting them to understand women's role as farmers in their own rights and the need for women to get land. And the group approach seemed to help because then women were seen as strangers within this land holding group. And so the traditional authorities were prepared and ready to give women land to farm as a group. And the group also then acted as some kind of protection for these women. It was possible then for these women also to get access to other resources that enhance their farming activities. Now the question here that comes up is how do we feed these into the statutory provisions that the New Land Act has brings and what kinds of opportunities that this allow. And we see that the initiatives now are working towards assisting women's rights groups that work with women on their land rights. How can they develop title deeds and how can they work with traditional rulers? And then all kinds of documentaries also that can be shared within rural communities that can convince people about the need to give land to women. But at the bottom line is land hunger which I mentioned. And the fact that most of the land that women get through these activities are those lands that are quickly eaten up by a large-scale acquisition or acquisition for urban residential projects. So the final thing that we need to look at is this capitalist interest that is driving land reform because then we move away from patriarchy within the customary system. And we are faced with capitalists interest that is pushing land for individual use. And in this also, whatever benefits that the customary communal access gives rural women is going to be lost. And within this also comes the differentiation of women. Those who have the resources and therefore can acquire land as private individuals. And this is the next thing also that we need to look at because as women acquire land as private individuals, what does, what do the interests of this group of women also in terms of protecting their private interests mean for women, rural women who can only access land through the communal access. And I think that I rest my case here. Hope to deal with questions that come up later. Thank you so much, Akua. And thanks for leaving us with a important question about whether capitalism is sort of replacing patriarchy in terms of harming women. The final speaker from Nigeria, can you give us any examples from Nigeria? Thank you. As I mentioned earlier, the land laws we have in Nigeria are not actually geared towards development of the owner of the land. But more about land administration and land titling interest in land being invested in the government. In essence, the government having total control over all lands in Nigeria. However, as I mentioned earlier, we have legal instruments that, you know, individuals could draw on to enforce their rights. And of course, the examples that we have would be based on women who are aware of their rights and have actually taken it to the courts for enforcement. Now, an example comes to mind of a lady who actually, you know, she was divorced and she had the parcel of land which the husband bought for her. And somewhere along the line, there was a struggle over who would take that parcel of land and all of that. Unfortunately, the land was registered in her name and that made it easy for her to, you know, take it to the court and ensure that her rights to that land was enforced. So while we can say that at the government level, we don't have any pragmatic measure as it were to ensure that women are protected, especially women in the rural areas. Like I have been mentioning right from the beginning of the webinar, women in the rural areas are the ones that are the most disadvantaged. I would say that once you know your rights in Nigeria, you can actually fight for it. Now, it's not as automatic. There are other factors that come to play here. There are bureaucratic procedures that need to be followed, which may actually take some time to see that that law is enforced. They talk about the financial aspect of it. Many women actually develop cold feet when it comes to pursuing their rights, you know, legally because of the money involved and all of that. So basically, we don't have any, we really don't have any measure put in place to ensure tenure security for women other than what the constitution and other documents, you know, provide. Patriarchal attitudes continue to define women's access to land, even at the governmental level. So I think I'll just conclude with that. Thank you. Thank you. So we'll move now to questions. These questions will be directed toward panelists. If you have a specific panelist that you'd like to respond to your question, please indicate that. And now I go to the questions. Okay. So this is a question for a coup. In Ghana, there's no legislation that protects women's rights to land after death of their husbands. Question mark. And asked together with this question, please, could you explain a bit more about the differences in access to land in the matrilineal and patrilineal systems and how the matrilineal system is patriarchal. Yeah. Thanks, Renee. I think I have tried some answers, but let me answer these questions first. Yeah, there are laws that protect women in terms of death of husbands. So if husbands should not test it. And this was one of the very first laws that came up during the military regime. And so we have the interstate succession law. And it allows women to inherit household chattel, women and children. Now there's a big problematic area of children. And sometimes you find out that where there are multiple wives and then there are also children from other marriages. How did you see that? And sometimes you find out that where there are multiple wives and then there are also children from other marriages. How the distribution is organized becomes problematic. But the law seeks to protect children more than wives. And it really has helped to sanitize the environment a bit. Recently also there's the, there's a bill that I needed to check whether how far it has gone. But then the Land Act has also dealt with some of these things because as I mentioned the Land Act is saying that property are acquired during marriage. And this also answers another question which is asking about cohabitation. So all properties are acquired during marriage. Now whether it is registered or not. In so long as there can be proof that there was a relationship and that relationship meant that the two lived and performed functions towards each other as married couples would. Then that would be considered as married. And it therefore allowed women to get access to all landed property acquired during that marriage. Women do not have to show proof that they made a direct contribution. All they needed to show was that there was marriage and indeed that property was acquired during marriage. Now the second question about matriline and patriline because there's a tendency to confuse matriline with matriarchy. And matriarchy means that women holding power over men just like men now hold power over women. Now matriline is how we determine inheritance. So who can inherit office and who can inherit property? Office is that if you are chief or you are family head. So traditional office who can inherit? Who has right to inherit? Now in the matrilineal communities it is who you share blood with. And the matrilineal system says that you get your blood from your mother and you get your soul from your father. So if you share blood with someone, then that person is your family member. So in this case, children get their soul from their fathers and they get their blood from their mother. So children and their fathers do not belong to the same family. So if a father acquires property, it goes to his family members which is matrilineal brothers and sisters or matrilineal sisters children and not his own children. Even though there are customary provisions that enjoins the person who inherits property to take care of the liabilities of the diseased man. Somehow these customary practices have dropped. So you have a system where a man dies and a woman dies. So matrilineal family just drives the women and children out of the house. So this is what this law was supposed to deal with. So matriline is not matriarchy unfortunately. Even though women tend to have certain rights within matrilineal systems that women do not have, some women do not have in matrilineal systems. So there's some laxity that women do not have in matrilineal systems. They are not seen so much as strangers as women are seen within their matrilineal groups. But then still it is men that determine how the land is distributed and who gets access to land. And still women are not seen as farmers in their own rights even within the matrilineal systems. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done. So matriline is for all panelists, but we'll start with Justine. In Liberia, Nigeria, or even East African countries, we find gender sensitive policy and legislation, but yet is a huge endeavor to implement law policy that is equitable for men and women. Maybe the problem is that we keep developing policy from the top down, lawyers and NGOs and far from reality, but we can't do that. We can't do that. So we do have a long-term dialogue and negotiation, but from the ground up. Justine. Oh, yeah. I can't agree with that. I can't agree with that. It's, it's it's. Justine. You cannot hear you. You're too soft. Oh, sorry. Do you hear me now? Not very well. What's happening. go ahead better yeah so i wanted to say that i can't agree more with the statement truly i think laws in most countries especially in sub-saharan africa are made from from the cities from offices and today's enough research that shows that if laws were made from bottom up it's not only the fact that it's going to based on experiences the real experiences of the people and the ways of life but it also that term will also work as an awareness raising situation so literally action oriented kind of approach so i totally agree with aileen i think it's aileen who who raised that issue that way are possible but then we remember that sometimes these laws are done in in a situation where there isn't enough funds to conduct that rigorous bottom up kind of situation kind of lawmaking across the country when you talk about really sometimes big countries of course Liberia the population is not that big but again whether whether there was money to take that approach was another issue but i totally agree that there is need to intentionally start to do laws from ground up what's that yeah it would be better but not also forgetting that all of us including the politicians and the cities and the villages we are raised in the same cultures it's us who come from the villages sometimes into the cities so that kind of mindset change changing the norms is needed from even for the politicians so working at all levels rather than just the bottom or the up is i think what is more needed when the resources are available thank you justine do either of the other two of you like to answer that question or to move on to a new one okay um i think i have a slight difference to that yes it would be okay to have a bottom up approach but i also think that the system of government in these countries needs to be considered most in a democratic setting for instance democracy emphasizes representation in other words policies and laws are made through representatives i think what would be most effective is if we have a higher representation or let's say equal representation of the women in you know in these government institutions because we find out that even in politics women are discriminated against you know in Nigeria we are still trying to get to a point where we would have about 33 percent participation of women in politics we've not yet gotten to that level so i believe it's not even about the bottom up approach for more of equal representation when women occupy decision making offices from the grassroots we have local governments in Nigeria now that are headed by men in fact most local governments these local governments reach out to people at the grassroots most local governments are headed by men rather and you know they may not be sensitive to the plight of the women if they may not be able to you know also come up with policies or activities that will favor the women as it were but if we have females occupying leadership positions right from the grassroots you know up to the top tier of government i believe that you know there would be an improvement so that's my own take on it thank you thank you Akua do you want to add anything or no i think that's we we we should take out that question okay um so this is for all panelists again do women in Ghana Liberia Nigeria face challenges in buying land and can someone on the panel share experience on the issue of women who are co-habitating and working along with their partner to acquire property who would like to go first okay i would like to say something yes women do experience severe challenges when it comes to acquiring land you know it's not even about their financial power now it's not about being able to afford the land but there are invisible laws as we've been talking about customary laws that actually shape behavior towards a woman's desire to buy land and sometimes you find out that even this okay most communal lands are kept under the control of the head of that community he decides who is going to allocate the land to and whoever allocates the land to decides who is going to sell the land to now you find out that when a woman approaches you know a community head and tells the community leader that he wants she is interested in buying the parcel of land he may not outrightly stated that he doesn't want to sell to her but there's just this patriarchal attitude and the woman gets it that oh would it be that this man does not want to sell this land to me now if that same woman brings a man maybe her husband her brother or any male relative who accompanies her to the community leader the whole narrative changes you'll find the man saying things that okay let's talk man to man and you begin she is going to drop the money for that land she is the one buying the land but they feel more comfortable negotiating with a male so definitely the experience severe challenges and it's even more when they perceive that is a single lady she's not married or she's divorced you know they see her as promiscuous why would she divorce her husband and all of that so patriarchal attitudes actually you know shape shape such relations between the seller and the buyer and as a matter of fact there was a study that was conducted and most of the respondents said they would actually prefer male clients to female clients and that tells it all thank you thank you does anyone else want to respond yeah yeah sorry go ahead okay yeah I can share the experience from Liberia in Liberia it's different from community to community some communities are becoming more responsive to women buying and acquiring land although tradition they have to be accompanied by men and that is changing probably with the new awareness raising but it's true that in some other communities a woman cannot even buy a land for herself there's a store of one politician I will share that so quickly who told us that she bought her and her husband bought a land from a community but the community leader the traditional leader refused to put the woman on the on the on the contract because he believed that women should not go on the on the land contract so what they did the lady and the husband what they did this is a female minister what they did is that they refused to pay him the second half and the husband told the chief or the traditional leader that the money belongs to the woman and unless he adds her name on the contract then she will not pay the second half so that's how hard it is even for this I've seen comments about the difference between educated and uneducated women but this is how hard it is even for women when they are educated a minister in the government so there are still obstacles for women to be able to buy land and this again links to the situation of cohabitation cohabitation is such a big when it comes to land and family property rights I think across Southern Africa and I think it's an area that's understudied including my country Randa where you know women's promotion is really hard but also in Liberia the law only when it comes to to to land rights it only covers women who are formally married and the problem is that even where laws for example like in Kenya require that a woman brings evidence usually women have no evidence to show that they contributed to the property even when they buy property their own right with their own money the culture is that property belongs to the man so she will entrust the money with the man to go and buy the property and so if she's in cohabitation at the end of the day the poor woman will have nothing to show that she contributed to this this land so the the the issue is the social norms the more we can create awareness of this thing but also empower women to know the tactics around patriarchy and how they can protect their own rights to property and land meanwhile the laws are changing and the mindsets are changing even for a woman to know that if I contribute to this property I have my evidence with me so empowering women is a very key issue here thank you thank you yeah yeah thanks Renee so I um I will begin with a cohabitation I think I mentioned it briefly but I want to emphasize it in fact one one of the things that the new labor the new land act has tried to deal with is this cohabitation because we realize that in in the number of the migrant communities you know so the woman has a first child then they're thinking that they'll be married and by the time you are where she probably has four or five children and it's 20 30 years and then the whole point about performing the customary rights uh uh and becomes pointless and and and then of course the ability also to register the relationship that becomes another burden so what this law is saying is that is so long as there is proof of my that you perform the services of a spouse now the problem is is finding someone to go and and and stand behind you to to to stand with you throughout the the entire process and and the process of land acquisition is fraught with a lot of patriarchal attitudes at first of all the woman's ability to even acquire enough financial resources to purchase land so domestic arrangements are such that I'm sorry there's a there's a track moving in my neighborhood so if it's making too much noise you forgive me now the the domestic arrangements are such that women seldom have enough time to acquire the required resources to when purchase land first and second when they do and do they find the process of tackling uh friendly do they have the time and and and then uh thirdly also to what extent does a marital relationship allow her to push herself up as a woman who is acquiring property and still maintain the the marital relationship if if men within certain traditional communities like this chief felt that was an affront for women to have a name on on on the title deed so these are all the tensions that women women face so that there's statutory provisions in Ghana are trying to encourage women and really are really very supportive of women acquiring land but then the patriarchal norms are such that they still discourage women from acquiring land and these are the issues that we we need to deal with what kinds of structures do we set up so that women who want to register land can do so without having to deal with time without having to deal with financial resources and all that what what kinds of um awareness creation do we make so that women do not feel that they're undermining their men if if they acquire property in their own names these are issues that we need to be addressing in the next line of how we support women's land rights so we only have a few minutes left and we won't get to all of the questions many of them very interesting and good um maybe we should each have have each of you wrap up uh and in about 30 seconds uh give us some um ending comments please why don't we start with you Akua? Yeah thanks Rene I think that my few seconds of running up is dealing with Salome Yemani's question what role can that the diaspora play in ensuring that women's rights in South Saharan Africa are implemented I think that the diaspora will do well to be looking at a international policies around trade around foreign direct investments and what they mean for national land tenure systems in in general and because very fast the land that we have available within uh South Saharan Africa is is is getting taken up through large scale land acquisition so the land acquisition procedures and and everything drops everything collapses all the systems and structures we set in place to protect women's rights collapse in the face of large-scale land acquisition so this is where the diaspora can the role the diaspora can play in looking at international arrangements and and organizing more in terms of activism around that and how and finally uh how women's uh the land can be secured for us to secure women's land rights within the little land that is left available for us. Thank you very much how about Alua Kemi do you have any final key messages you want us to hear? Thank you very much well I would just compute by saying that education is very key awareness of your rights is very key and most battles are actually fought and won when you know what you are fighting for and then you are armed to actually fight for it most of these issues wouldn't even be coming up if many are aware that there are provisions of the law that can actually be you know invoked in favor of them so I would just conclude that um a lot has to be done on the area of awareness and I believe that once that is achieved we can we can deploy the legal resources that are available for us then I would just like to quickly um emphasize something I saw a comment here that okay it's not in all places in Nigeria it's not in all the states in Nigeria as it were that women cannot buy land that is very true Nigeria is a heterogeneous country we have different tribes in Nigeria and each of these tribes have their peculiar laws that guide them so the laws in southwest may be different from the laws governing them in the north or in the south south or in other regions of the country but generally speaking it's a it's a patriarchal attitude that there is a male preference when it comes to women buying land it's a general practice there may be exceptions but that is what we find even in literature there are studies that supports this so I would just end with that thank you very much thank you very much Justine you get the last word I would say that I agree with everything that has been said but I also want to say that to call to the attention that it's the system that we are fighting with these issues affect women and men all together all of us so it's not a war against men it's not a war against or a war for women but it's the systems that we need to deal with we have been talking about the root the root from the conversations and the chats we have here is that yes the laws can be in place good laws can be in place but unless we go back to the root of the issue which is the way of life that people live and address those patriarchal tendencies working with the people understanding their language understand why they are living that life and work with them to change those issues then we shall always come back to square one it will be a battle a war rather than something that should change naturally so I call all of us here to go back to our communities and work with the people to change those cultural beliefs thank you thank you Justine so this ends for today but check out the new country portfolios don't forget to let us know whether you liked the webinar or not and please subscribe to the land portal thank you so much for your time really appreciate it and it's been fun bye bye bye bye bye thank you thanks for having this thank you