Women Empowerment, Land Disputes and Other Reports
Every week, RuralReporters.com collate reports on development issues in rural Africa and its environs.
This report includes some of our top picks from recent must-read research, interviews, blogs, and in-depth articles, carefully selected to help you keep up with global issues.
Here are some of the updates you may have missed from the previous week:
UN: African Women Need Voice in Politics to Achieve Equality
The U.N. Commission on the Status of Women says gender equality in Africa can be achieved only if women and girls — especially those in rural areas — have a voice in politics and economic planning.
That conclusion came out of the commission’s annual meeting in New York this week. Lopa Banerjee, director of the U.N. Women’s Civil Society Division, said the commission has “irrefutable evidence” that women and girls in rural areas will be left behind unless government policy failures are addressed.
Empower Women and Girls in Rural Areas to Achieve the SDGs and Africa’s Agenda 2063
This year’s CSW62 Priority Theme: “Challenges and Opportunities in achieving gender equality and the empowerment of rural women and girls” is critical to the attainment of the SDGs Agenda 2030 and Africa’s Agenda 2063.
Participants noted that rural communities particularly women in Africa are endowed with natural resources, however they are under resourced in addition to the fact that women and girls living in rural areas face differing realities and challenges across the continent. Most of these challenges are directly linked to gender inequality and structural barriers, including women’s unequal access to power and resources which disadvantages and discriminates against women and girls living in rural areas. Unfortunately, Africa will not realize its potential if women and girls living in rural Africa continue to face structural barriers to the full enjoyment of their human rights, which are often inadequately or insufficiently addressed in laws, policies, budgets, investments, and interventions at all levels across the continent.
They called on all players to address the limited access to quality social services, infrastructure, energy and labor saving technology, coupled with the reproductive role of women which increases the burden of care on women and girls.
Tiny, rural village boasts more than 30 medals from 800m champions
It’s an interesting statistic. But the trend in Kenyan middle distance running has over the years elicited exciting tales fit for an Oscar Award. One wonders why world’s elite 800m runners come from a village in Nandi County that has dotted the global charts since the 1968 Olympic Games.
Kabirirsang, in the heart of tea-rich farmlands, has lived up to its billing as a seedbed of elite sprinters, who reside within a three-kilometre radius of the village. The village boasts a collection of more than 30 medals as the globe’s best 800m talents have established a strong empire. It has the highest number of Olympic, World, Commonwealth and Africa 800m champions in the race’s history.
Kenya: Men, Rural Populations Most Affected By Land Disputes – Study
At least 2.6 million Kenyans encountered land-related legal problems in the past four years.
According to a new report released by the Judiciary last week, men faced the highest number of land disputes in court compared to women. Eighteen per cent of cases men faced in court were land-related compared to women whose land disputes in court accounted for eleven per cent of the legal hurdles they faced in the quadrennial ending 2017 during which between 17.2 and 17.9 million Kenyans experienced legal problems.
Nigeria’s Anti-Grazing Laws Fail to Address the Root Causes of Rural Conflict
Nigeria’s population has quadrupled in the past 60 years, creating a host of pressures on the country’s rural population and pushing farmers and herders into an escalating state of conflict. In 2016 and 2017, four states in Nigeria enacted bans on the open grazing of cattle, aimed at restricting herders and the pastoral communities they support. But the bans haven’t helped reduce violence; over 100 people have already been killed in clashes between farmers and herders this year. In an email interview, Adam Higazi, a research fellow at the University of Amsterdam and an affiliated lecturer at the University of Cambridge, who has carried out several years of fieldwork in Nigeria, discusses the grazing bans and why they fail to address the root causes of Nigeria’s rural conflicts.
9,500 Rural Dwellers Benefit From UNILORIN Medical Outreach
More than 9,500 rural dwellers have benefitted from a one-month-long medical outreach organised by the medical students of the University of Ilorin in Kwara.
Mr Atuhtetuh Francis, a 200 level student, who spoke with NAN said his team encountered invasion of bees, which nearly marred the programme. Francis also listed lack of clean water and electricity as well language barrier in the six communities visited as other challenges they encountered during the outreach.
“These rural communities have health challenges that include malaria, with children more prone to the disease.
“Others were ringworm, body and joint pain, diarrhoea, typhoid and hypertension, among others,’’ Francis said.
NGO calls for social health scheme for rural poor
A Non-governmental organisation, Programme Committee of Young Women Christian Association, (YWCA) has called on government to help provide affordable health care services to people in the informal sector.
The NGO chairman Dr Olatokunbo Oseni, said there is an urgent need for government and other relevant stakeholders to work out a workable insurance health care scheme for men and women in the informal sector.
She noted that there are increasing number of taxable adults in Nigeria in the informal sector who are not been captured in the National Health Insurance Scheme.
