Procuring meaningful land rights for the women of Rwanda.

• Author: Polavarapu, Aparna

Land reform and gender equality are important development issues in post-Genocide Rwanda. Beginning in 1999, the government of Rwanda passed and implemented reforms which granted women rights to own and use land on an equal status with men. However, as is expected with widespread social reform, obstacles continue to inhibit widespread gender equality in practice. In Rwanda, major social obstacles manifest in the form of (1) resistance to allowing daughters to inherit land from their parents, (2) adherence to assumptions of female inferiority, and (3) the persistence of informal marriages, in which wives remain unprotected by the new laws. Interested actors have documented these obstacles and proposed legal and policy solutions to overcome them. This article seeks to identify the causes underlying these obstacles to gender equality. Through this analysis, I find that land scarcity, vestiges of discriminatory legal systems, and gendered power structures are significant underlying causes of these social obstacles. I argue that many of the currently proposed solutions are inadequate because they do not address these underlying causes, as is necessary to better secure women's land rights.

The question currently before Rwanda--how to ensure gender equality in the face of continuing social obstacles--has importance outside Rwanda's borders. The underlying causes discussed in this Article are not unique to Rwanda. Understanding the ways in which these factors inhibit gender equality, and finding solutions to overcome them, are lessons learned not just for Rwanda, but also for the international development community.

INTRODUCTION

After the 1994 Genocide, land reform and gender equality became important issues for governmental, nongovernmental, and international aid actors concerned with the rebuilding and development of Rwanda. Beginning in 1999, the government of Rwanda passed and implemented a series of laws, regulations, and policies designed to reform the land tenure system as well as grant women rights to own and use land on an equal status with men. The reforms represent some of many great strides Rwanda has made in establishing gender equality not just in law, but also in practice. However, as is expected with widespread social reform, social obstacles continue to inhibit gender equality in practice. That is, certain behaviors prevent women from exercising their new land rights. In Rwanda, major social obstacles manifest in the form of resistance to allowing daughters to inherit land from their parents and resistance to allowing women to exercise their new authority to own and use land. They also appear in the persistence of informal marriages, in which wives remain unprotected by the new laws. This Article seeks to understand the underlying causes of these obstacles. Through this analysis, I seek to narrow the field of proposed solutions and direct the conversation towards the types of solutions which directly address the causes of these social obstacles and are thereby more effective.

Post-Genocide reconstruction and development implicates both land and women. Rwanda has long suffered from land scarcity. Conflict over land is often cited as one of the major drivers of ethnic conflict in Rwanda throughout the twentieth century and is considered by many to be a cause of the Genocide. (1) In post-Genocide Rwanda, land continues to be scarce and population density continues to increase, especially as former refugees have begun returning home. With multiple, competing claims to land creating confusion over land ownership and potentially planting the seeds for future conflict, the ongoing land reform process is essential.

Immediately post-Genocide, women made up a majority of the population and headed more than a third of all households. (2) Post-conflict reconstruction and development thus also hinges on whether women's rights are appropriately recognized and addressed. Understanding this, Rwanda has demonstrated noteworthy dedication to empowering its women. Article 9 of the Rwandan Constitution affirms the country's commitment to gender equality and requires women to be granted "at least thirty per cent (30%) of posts in decision making organs." (3) As of 2006, women comprised almost half of the national parliament, "giving Rwandan women a legislative position unique in the world that will hopefully contribute to their overall empowerment." (4) To ensure the protection of women's rights, the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion, created in 1994, is charged with developing programs and policies to eliminate gender inequality, "to accelerate women's participation in economic development," and to assist in the implementation of women's self-determination programs. (5) Specific to land, it has worked with the Ministry of Justice to identify discriminatory legislative provisions and has contributed to the drafting of the Succession Law. (6) It is precisely this dedication to gender equality that makes Rwanda an informative study on how to achieve gender equality in land rights.

Working with international agencies, international NGOs, and domestic NGOs, Rwanda has implemented land reforms which, among other things, grant women new land rights. New laws were drafted which grant women inheritance rights and the right to own, sell, and use land, and empower local councils to settle land disputes. More recently, these agencies and NGOs, working with the Rwandan government, have focused on how to ensure that women are able to benefit from these law and policy changes. Overhauling a system requires overcoming certain obstacles. Implementing gender equality in particular requires the difficult task of combating entrenched customary views on appropriate gender roles and on who can benefit from legal and economic rights. Representatives and consultants for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID); the Rural Development Institute, an international non-profit organization; African Rights, an international NGO; and the Rwandan Ministry of Lands' National Land Tenure Reform Programme, (7) among others, have all conducted field studies to determine how effectively women's rights are being implemented. These studies suggest that while the land laws have created positive change, certain obstacles and limitations to gender equality continue to exist. Such obstacles and limitations include legal exclusions of groups of women, (8) as well as problems of implementation, such as difficulties with enforcement. (9) Others are what I term "social obstacles," or continuing social behaviors which inhibit the operation of the laws and gender equality. It is these social obstacles which are the focus of my analysis.

Several of the aforementioned studies identified three major social obstacles inhibiting gender equality: (1) resistance to granting daughters their rights to inherit land, (2) adherence to assumptions of female inferiority, and (3) the continued entry by couples into informal marriages, in which wives cannot benefit from the new laws. My own field research in 2009 confirmed the existence of these obstacles. The studies also suggested several legal and policy solutions to overcoming these obstacles. Many of these solutions focus on countering a lack of awareness of the new laws and wearing down social resistance. This is where my conclusions differ. I argue that these obstacles arise out of more than just lack of awareness or desire to maintain status quo in order to adhere to custom. I argue that they are also the result of economic disincentives arising from land scarcity, legal reinforcement of customary beliefs, and gendered power structures, which are deep-seated and underlying issues that must be addressed for any legal or policy solution to be effective.

The analysis in this article relies on the laws, published field studies, and my own qualitative field research. My field research, comprised of semi-structured interviews of seventy-three people in Rwanda in 2009, was exploratory in nature. The data are not statistically significant but provide anecdotal evidence of broad thematic issues related to gender equality and land rights. Interviewees included public officials, civil servants, men, women, farmers, non-farmers, local dispute resolution actors, microcredit officers, public officials and members of civil society organizations. (10)

In Part I of this Article, I provide a historical overview of land laws and practices in Rwanda as they related to women through the end of the Genocide. In Part II, I give an overview of the development of Rwanda's land reforms and provide a description of the post-land reform framework in Rwanda and the new rights afforded to women. In Part III, while acknowledging improvements in the realm of land rights and gender equality, I analyze those social obstacles which continue to inhibit women's exercise of their new land rights.

Using the laws, published field studies, and my own qualitative field research, I demonstrate that these obstacles arise in part due to land scarcity, legal reinforcement of customary beliefs, and gendered power structures. These deep-rooted and underlying causes must be addressed when considering how to better secure women's land rights.

1. A CONTEXTUAL UNDERSTANDING OF WOMEN AND LAND IN RWANDA

   Laws relating to land ownership have gone through many permutations in Rwanda, but in the years leading up to and immediately after the Genocide, one theme remained constant: women were denied the right to own land. Although customary practices, in principle, had built-in protections for women, these protections disappeared when land became scarce.

   In pre-colonial Rwanda, land ownership was determined by the customary systems of ubukonde in the North and Northwest, and isambuigikingi in the other regions known as the Central Kingdom. The former was a system in which land was owned by a particular lineage, with the head of the lineage...