NEGLECTED
There are more than 258 million widows worldwide, nearly 10 percent of whom live in sub-Saharan African, according to the Loomba Foundation's 2015 World Widows Report.
Around one in 10 African women are widows, yet there is little data on their lives or well-being.
Widows are often overlooked because they do not know their rights, or feel compelled to stay silent about the abuse they face, said Naana Otoo-Oyortey, head of women's rights charity FORWARD.
"Widows may not see the rituals as violating their rights, but as a normal way to honor their husband. Even if they want to speak out, they know there will be repercussions," she said.
While many African countries such as Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Ghana have laws to protect widows' rights, these are often trumped in rural areas by customary laws, campaigners say.
Widows' rights activists across Africa are now pushing to change harmful cleansing rituals.
Rather than having sex with a relative of her late husband, many widows in Zimbabwe offer a bowl of water if they want to stay with the family.
In Sierra Leone, women were encouraged to wash stones instead of corpses during the Ebola outbreak to avoid spreading the virus.
"Traditional cleansing rites helped spread Ebola until they were halted and changed ... there is no reason these alternative mourning rites could not become common," said WRI's Brewer.
Several civil society groups across sub-Saharan Africa work to inform widows of their rights, support their inheritance claims, and provide refuge for those evicted or ostracized.
But Marthe Chantal Ngouassa, president of the Cameroonian charity Widows in Distress, said governments too often neglected widows and ignored the hardships they faced.
"All widows have the same problem - they are marginalized, stigmatized and abused," she said. "The death of the widow begins with the death of the husband."
Linkback:
https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=82395.0