Noeleen Heyzer, Executive Director, UNIFEM: (The United Nations Development Fund for Women) supporting our conference in 2001
....In the context of our efforts to advance the full realisation of women's human rights and the elimination of all forms of violence against women, the special concerns of widows are of paramount concern to UNIFEM.
Success Stories on Negative Traditonal and Cultural Practices
Madam Betty Ayagiba, National Director, Widows and Orphans
Ministry, Ghana
The Widows and Orphans Ministry (WOM) carried out research on inheritance in four communities near Bolgatanga in the Upper East Region of Ghana and uncovered the following human rights issues among widows and reasons for their poverty:
- Widows must bear the cost of the husband’s funeral and some widows even come to the WOM office to borrow money to perform their husband’s funeral rites.
- The ritualist takes the clothes the widow wears during the funeral rites
- Widows have to feed the ritualist with nutritious diet and other items like cooling drinks, alcohol, and tobacco (depending on what she/he takes) during the course of the funeral
- Widows must supply the ritualist with all kinds of foodstuffs to take home after the funeral
- The widow is stripped naked during the funeral
- The widow is bathed naked before the crowd of mourners
- The widow is forced to choose somebody in the husband’s family to marry and to continue bearing children to the dead husband’s name
- A relative of the deceased inherits his property including the widow herself
Recommendations from the research were that WOM should work with Chiefs, opinion
formers and group leaders to bring about change in attitudes. 
So WOM
enlisted the support of the Commission of Human Rights and Justice (CHRAJ)
and Women and Juvenile Unit (WAJU) to run a series of workshops to educate
the community on property laws, to adopt positive cultural practices and to
eliminate or change negative cultural practices. Facilitators used
various Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) tools to ensure the success of
the workshops
The workshops brought together more than one thousand participants from four communities and included Chiefs, elders, opinion formers and group leaders, and widows.
At each workshop for the chiefs, community men and women, the Director of WOM gave participants the findings of the research on the causes of widows’ poverty, after which widows shared with the community their experiences when their husbands died.
At one location a widow spoke of how she was driven out of the house she and
her husband had toiled and built, and slept under a tree for three months.
Another widow told of how her dead husband had left bullocks yet his relatives
are using these bullocks to farm whilst she and her child weed with their hands. Another
woman could not control her tears as she told the story of how she and her
children were maltreated; she said her children refused to eat food for four
days.
A young widow confessed how a young man was seriously looking at her when
they stripped her naked. She asked the man why he was looking at her and he
replied that he felt bad for her. Another widow said she refused to
strip naked at the first of her husband’s funeral rites, but then
everybody in the village were against her saying that she had committed adultery
and killed her husband which was the reason why she refused to strip naked. So
during the final funeral rites she had to strip herself naked. One
widow told of her pain when her children saw her nakedness at her husband’s
funeral.
One ritualist said that they could only stop these practice if they are supported to rear goats or guinea fowls instead of performing funeral rites for employment.
The second part of the workshop on educating chiefs, community men and women on property law was handled by WAJU and CHARJ. The facilitators were taken to the four villages and the community was educated on laws concerning inheritance of property. Participants were also told there are laws protecting women and children and, therefore, a person who dehumanizes another person’s dignity could be reported for punishment.
In our view this style of workshop is the best to combat or reduce negative cultural practices. The community was exposed to the plight of the widows and some of the practices such as drinking of concoctions made from contaminated leaves worn by a widow during a previous funeral.
When we were asked to send our contribution to the U.N Secretary General’s paper on violence against women, we mentioned that this is an effective method to reduce violence against widows.
Two Successful Outcomes
- A workshop was held in Kongo. After the workshop the Kongo Chief
and all the elders agreed that from the day onward they would not strip widows
naked during funerals and would end the drinking of any concoctions. They
also agreed that after the death of the husband, the widow and her children
should use the husband property and when a widow’s daughter gets married,
a portion of the bridewealth or the cows should be given to the mother. One
of the elders also spoke of how only girls are trained in cooking and doing
all household jobs leaving the boys behind. All agreed that boys should
also be trained in cooking in the home.
Kongo was exceptional because they took immediate action to stop some of these
negative funeral practices. The other three villages asked for time to think
about possible changes but at the same time there was no doubt of how badly
they felt to the exposure.
- BA, about 30 years old, was her husband’s second wife, and they had
three children. His first wife had five children. Three years ago he
died after a short illness.
During his lifetime BA’s husband was able to put up six rooms for himself and his two wives. After his death, life was so hard for BA that she had to move to town to look for a job to take care of her children. Through the WOM she was trained in baking bread.
One day she decided to visit her in-laws and to clean her rooms; while she was sweeping, her husband’s brother came in and asked why she had come to the house. He beat her so severely that she had to go to hospital. She reported this to WOM, and he was arrested and imprisoned. After two months he was given the option of paying a five hundred thousand cedis fine or spending a further six months in prison.
This case has scared a lot of in-laws from beating widows.