IWD: How Can Kenya Implement the UN Widowhood Resolution

There are an estimated 258.5 million widows globally, a figure that increased by 9% between 2010 and 2015, according to the World Widows Report. The figure exponentially increased as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic which has been considered a widow-maker as more men died than women. These deaths aggravated an already unequal gendered situation in many countries.

One would have imagined that the pandemic, could have activated a collective transformation and attention to protect widows’ rights. Even with the recently adopted UN Widowhood Resolution, the outcome is far from it.

Repeated attacks on widows and their rights

Through my work as a champion of widows with the Rona Foundation, I often hear cases of violence against widows. Last month, for instance, Alice, 47 years old, walked into our periodic storytelling workshop in Alego, with her only surviving son, and narrated her ordeal of facing repeat assaults, destruction of her crops, and threats to vacate her husband’s family land by her husband’s family.

In the same week, Rona Foundation received numerous distress calls and text messages from an unfamiliar number, Millicent, 40 years old with three children, walked into our village facility and broke down. To our staff, she narrated the trauma the physical beatings and threats to never till her land - by her brother-in-law and his wife - had caused her and her children. The latest incident was an assault that she was now scared to report to the police.

Prior to that, we had been mediating other cases that involved violence. For instance, Grace, a 45-year-old widow with three children had received notice to vacate her village home because the co-wife claimed the land did not belong to her late husband even though he was buried there. Or Pauline, a childless widow, 40 years old, who endured numerous acts of sexual violence by her half-son as she fought for her land rights.

These stories should prompt legislation and transformative administrative steps toward advancing, protecting, and fulfilling the needs of Kenyan widows. Yet the widows report little to no support. Even during global campaigns like last year’s 16 days of activism themed ”UNITE! Activism to end violence against women and girls,” inviting everyone to play their role in ending violence against women and girls, there should have been more solidarity.

Widowhood is not only a personal status but also a social one

Violence against widows is often perpetrated by people known to them, who are familiar with the family’s history. They use gaps in law, vulnerability, and outdated cultural norms as tools of abuse. Some widows also endure harmful traditional practices such as levirate – forced remarriage to an in-law – and other forms of emotional and economic abuses like demeaning names, short compassionate leave days, and controlled or extended mourning periods.

In Kenya, where I live, discrimination, disinheritance, and oppressive social norms remain common across the country’s 47 counties, which is why the state should take specific policy actions and develop programming frameworks with immediate and long-term goals to help widows. After all, widowhood is not only a personal status but also a social one. With an estimated 8 million widows in Kenya, and with the country at position 33 in the list of countries in the world that have a harsh environment for widows, state action is crucial.

We need urgent action from the government because poverty and institutional discrimination limit many widows’ ability to access justice, decent work, and social protection. However, there have not been any noticeable domestic policy reforms on widowhood despite the new government getting into office last year in September with a prayerful philosophy and noble intentions for hustlers i.e widows and their children.

Time to outlaw and criminalise harmful widowhood practices

The recently adopted United Nations resolution on widowhood sets a resounding precedent for governments to address the situation of widows. They can start by identifying and mending the loopholes in the laws. And further, they can enforce the existing laws and policies in the areas of social equality, inheritance, and property ownership.

“Widows have no social status”, says Eunice Ndolo, MCA South Sakwa in Siaya county, a widow legislator, who faced many insults and odds to get elected. Such a statement reveals the need for the county or national government to create systems and structures of governance that truly ‘leave no one behind” according to the laws of the land. In many contexts, a husband is a layer of protection and without one, a woman’s vulnerability escalates. So, the government’s silence is loud. We need to see a change, now.

To implement the UN Resolution, Kenya’s president William Ruto should make public pronouncements, and policy commitments on reforms, demystify stereotypes, and advocate for the value of a widow. And to better serve widows, the government needs to establish a widow’s commission that can galvanize widow voices and undertake transformative and impactful interventions, including outlawing and criminalizing harmful traditional (widowhood) practices, like they did – with outlawing female genital mutilation and setting up the FGM Board.

It is time, Kenya, to protect women like Alice, Millicent, Grace, and Pauline and their children.

The views expressed in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity programme, the International Inequalities Institute, or the London School of Economics and Political Science.