Widow’s land rights in Uganda

By Sean Farrell.

In many ways it’s sad we have to hold an International Womens Day.  It’s sad that we pencil a day in the global calendar once a year to higshlight the issues of the rights of women.  It’s sad we have to highlight the many abuses, violations and inequality that women all over the world face.  It’s sad and it’s a reflection on us as people, as communities, as a country and as a world community.

I spent most of this last week in northern Uganda. This reality is brought home to me too often in the rural villages where I walk to meet widows and women who have been thrown off their land.

Meeting a widow like Alice Arral is too commonplace these days for me.  Listening to a story of a widow with homeless children having been thrown from the piece of land that is their right and only means of survival is a story that is not just sad but is a story that is illegal, immoral and unbelievable, and just too commonplace and widespread.

And while all the platitudes often are uttered on this day such as the fundamental rights that we all enjoy and share equally, it’s really the other 364 days that I worry about.
The other 364 days where widows are dispossessed quietly from the land without attention.
The other 364 days where women are battered with many hearing and no one intervening.
The other 364 days where rights are denied, hidden and stolen in so many ways.

So it’s sad we have this day.  But you know what’s sadder?

The fact that the other 364 days from now until this time next year is business as usual.....

And there is the real challenge of today.
To accept 'business as usual' or to believe in the ability to tilt the scales for people like Alice.
If we can’t believe in that, then we might as well not have this day.
But if we can, today is a challenge and a reminder...

Really that choice belongs equally to all of us...........