From DEBRA@OLN.comlink.apc.orgFri Sep 15 10:29:47 1995 Date: Wed, 13 Sep 1995 11:26:00 +0100 From: Debra Guzman Reply to: beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org To: beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org Subject: WCW: Widows Network [The following text is in the "ISO-8859-1" character set] [Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set] [Some characters may be displayed incorrectly] ## Original in: /HRNET/WOMEN ## author : apcwomen@wcw.apc.org ## date : 07.09.95 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- World widows network launched By Maria Elena Hurtado Widows, especially the elderly and those with children, are among the poorest of women and, sad to say, they are largely ignored. To address this problem, a world widow's network has been launched at an NGO Forum workshop on September 5. It is noteworthy to mention that the Nairobi Forward Looking Strategy for Women mentioned widows in just one paragraph on the elderly. Yet, millions of widows are chased out of their homes, often with no economic resources to sustain them. In some places, they are called witches and made responsible for the death of their husbands. The number of widows is growing. In one African country, 67% of adult women are widows. In India, there are three times more widows than widowers. Because of AIDS, wars and conflicts the number of young widows, even child widows, is growing. One of the reasons is that some HIV-positive men in Africa think they will be safe if they sleep with a very young wife. With migration, growing poverty, and land shortages, it is no longer true that widows are supported by the extended family. And everywhere, pension rights are being eroded. "All women have to be equipped to be able to live on their own once widowed," says Margaret Owen, a leading women's rights lawyer and a moving force behind the new network. Owen got interested in the problems of widows when she herself was widowed four years ago. She is about to publish a book on the subject and has joined a group of scholars under the umbrella of the Population Council in New York, who are looking at all a spects of widowhood such as access to assets, remarriage, pensions and maintenance. Owen will be running the new network from her own kitchen table in London. The network starts from a good base. In many parts of the world, widows are getting together to support each other. In Uganda, where the long civil war and AIDS have created millions of widows, an organization has been set up where widows aid themselves, develop income generating projects, get assistance on financial matters and have taken positions on subjects such as AIDS. At a 1994 widow's conference in Bangalore, India, they exchanged experiences about schemes to support widows such as that run by the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) which for a very small amount insures women for their husband's death. Owen has great hopes that the new world network of widows, through exchanges of information, experiences and ideas, will empower widows to become agents of change, to develop their own organizations, articulate their needs and claim their rights.