Maxensia Takirambule, Takes “The Stand for Her Land (S4HL)”

 Maxensia Takirambule, Takes “The Stand for Her Land (S4HL)”

Mayimuna is a widow whose husband died in a Road Traffic Accident along Kampala-Masaka Road. The husband’s body was brought home at 3:00pm and arrangements were made for burial. As soon as the husband was laid to rest, Mayimuna was asked by some relatives of the husband to leave the home and return to her parents. Fortunately, not all the relatives were happy with this. The ones who wanted her gone were overwhelmed by the ones who wanted her to stay. She stayed but she knew she had to secure her stable housing, food security, dignity, permanence, sense of routine and order in her life. She had five children to look after. The children needed to have their right to belonging, a homestead, protection and preservation secured. This is one of the many stories that women tell.

 The Stand for Her Land (S4HL) Campaign is a global advocacy campaign that aims to accomplish lasting change on the ground through collective actions at grassroots, national, and global levels towards securing women’s land rights.  The campaign aims to strengthen the land rights and tenure security of women across contexts (rural, peri-urban, and urban), across tenure systems (statutory, customary, individual, and communal) and across communities (Indigenous, forest, pastoral, agricultural) around the world.

Women’s land rights are a fundamental human right. These rights are foundational to agency, autonomy, self-determination, productivity, and gender equality.

When a woman holds secure rights to her land, power dynamics shift. Her dignity, household decision-making, and economic freedom increase. In the case of Mayimuna, her land rights helped her to break a pending cycle of poverty and destitution. She stayed at her home and exploited the land resource to the fullest. She managed to go on with the plans they had made with the late husband. She introduced mixed farming and demonstration plots in her area. The produce and the money from the different training sessions given at her premises, improved not only their own lives, but those of other families and the communities in the area.

The benefits multiplied. Mayimuna was a peer to other women and girls in the area. She was the example given anecdotally as far as land-related investments went. She was able to put all her children to school, took care of herself as a widow, she improved her home and built small self-contained rentals. She was even able to perform a Hijra. The standard of living improved in form of health, wellbeing, rain-water harvests, sanitation, proper housing with plumbing, utilities were present, and she maintained quality household nutrition. In owning and managing her land, she was able to invest and improve on her asset base. This further linked her to mechanisms through which she participated in addressing the gender gaps which affect issues of climate change, food security, and global health.

Mayimuna’s case is unique. Unfortunately, new evidence continues to show that despite all the contributions, secure women land rights play in fulfilling gender equality and advancing global sustainable development, control and ownership of land by women remains precarious.

There is a crosscutting importance of secure women’s land rights. We need to ensure that all women have secure land rights because they help to transform women and girls’ lives.  We need to come out strongly to show case examples where women have contributed to self-development and that of the community, they live in.  We have to address social cultural norms and traditions that deprive women of leadership, ownership and control of natural resources including land. Strong laws and policies mean little to women and girls without effective implementation and enforcement.

I am so proud to take “The Stand for Her Land” and be part of the campaign which aims to undertake collective advocacy to break down barriers and close this implementation gap between national, regional and global commitments and local practice in regard to women’s land rights to build a future where all women and men have a secure place to call home. We thank the teams we work with, CBOs, CSOs, NPOs, NGOs, the German Government for undertaking to sponsor the campaign actions in Uganda, Senegal and Ethiopia through joint collaboration between Landesa and the campaign steering committee composed of International non-governmental organizations with world renowned expertise and reach on Women’s land rights.