2023-08-14 22:17:51
In Côte d’Ivoire, only 12% of women own their land, according to official data from the Ivorian government. The Support Project for Women’s Access to Land Ownership (AFPF) has undertaken, since 2022 and until 2024, to make them aware of their rights, in partnership with several Ivorian associations and with the technical support and financier of USAID, the United States Agency for International Development.
With our special correspondent in Guiglo, Marine Jeannin
Marie Guei with a smile on her face. In the small village of Yaoudé, not far from Guiglo, she worked for more than fifteen years with her late husband on their plantation. But when she died, the widow was robbed by her in-laws. She took advantage of an awareness session conducted by the AFPF to plead her case. ” I lost my husband in 2017, says the fiftieth. His family took all the inheritance from me. I lived like that, I managed to eat with my children. When they came to Yaoudé, I pleaded my case, and then I regained my share. Two hectares of rubber in production. So it’s fine now. »
To resolve gender-related land disputes, project actors first resort to mediation, before turning to justice. “ In the village, everyone recognized that the woman helped her late husband to create a plantation of about five hectares, explains the director of the legal clinic of Guiglo, N’Guettia Kossonou, who followed the file. Because she participated, there is a legal mechanism called the de facto partnership. It is necessary, on this basis, to proceed to the mediation, to negotiate with her brothers-in-law so that one concedes something to her so that she can live. »
The problem is not so much the law, but its application. Traditionally, women are often excluded from the game of land governance and therefore totally dependent on the men of their family. ” In the name of the reproductive role of the woman, of food support, we will grant her a plot of land in her host family, affirms Ghislain Coulibaly, the sociologist of the project. But be careful, the lady has access to the land, but only to make pepper ! Just for gardening ! Women are excluded from access in quantity [à la terre]access in quality, and they do not have the possibility of transmitting this good. »
To remedy this, the AFPF has implemented several strategies. First, sensitize customary authorities by recalling that Ivorian law gives equal rights to land for men and women. Then convince the inhabitants to share the land between all their children, sons and daughters, to avoid succession disputes. And also push couples united by customary rites to marry in the prefecture, to protect the rights of widowed or divorced women.
The AFPF is a pilot project, started last year and due to end in 2024. But the results are conclusive and give hope for a national deployment in the coming years.
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