RIGHTS: Widows Face a Life of Quiet Destitution

from IPS

Nergui Manalsuren

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 12 (IPS) - Many years ago, as Dr. Mohini Giri was walking down a street in Vrindavan, India -- known as the "City of Widows" -- she noticed the body of a woman who had passed away on the road. Animals were feasting on the corpse, and no one had tried to move her or cremate her.

Giri asked a few young men to help her lift the body. They promptly refused, saying that to touch a dead widow would bring years of bad luck and impurity. Dr. Giri was shocked at their callousness and ultimately got help from other widows, who cremated the woman together.

The story inspired Giri, a widow herself, to found the Guild of Service, an organisation committed to the empowerment and rehabilitation of Indian widows.

The Guild of Service runs a shelter for 120 widows in Vrindavan, Uttar Pradesh, where there are at least 6,000 widows who have fled to the holy city from lives of trauma in West Bengal and other areas. Many survive by singing hymns in the temples for a cup of rice or by begging on the streets, and some are forced into prostitution.

"Earlier, widows were forced to commit sati [suicide] by burning themselves on their dead husband's funeral pyre, but that evil practice was abolished by the great social reformer Raja Rammohan Roy," Surabhi Chaturvedi, a counselor at the of Guild of Service, told IPS. "But still widows continue to live a life of quiet destitution."

"In Kashmir, a conflict-ridden state, there are many women who are widowed due to terrorism and militancy," she said. "We have a shelter home for widows and children affected by militancy, called Rahat Ghar (Rahat meaning solace) in Srinagar. We also equip those widows with vocational training and various skills that will enable them to stand on their own feet again."

The Guild also works with government agencies and other organisations to educate widows about their legal rights, helping them to open bank accounts and secure the state pensions they are entitled to.

Widows are stigmitised by society not only in India, but across the globe. Worldwide, every day, about 100 million widows and their children are ostracised, exploited, and harassed by the societies they live in, according to the Loomba Trust, an international charity based in Britain that aims to educate the children of poor widows throughout India.

"For these widows, the widowhood means denial of basic human rights," Cherie Blair, president of the Trust and wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, said at an event at the U.N. last November to promote widows' rights.

In some countries, widows are subjected to constant harassment. They not only face legal obstacles to inheriting property, but are also unable to send their children to school.

That makes many widows and their children "the most vulnerable and the poorest of the poor," Blair said.

In a statement urging the U.N. to protect widows from abuse and exploitation, Blair referred to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that provides a roadmap to guarantee the rights of all individual everywhere in the world.

She noted it was a widow who led the meeting that approved the Declaration in 1948. That meeting was chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of the U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Blair has called for the world body to adopt a resolution designating Jun. 23 as International Widows Day. The Loomba Trust was established on Jun. 23, 1997 to help poor widows in India and other developing countries.

The charity's work has been widely acknowledged by some of the world's most prominent figures, such as Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton, and Virgin Group's chairman, Sir Richard Branson. Though pleased with their response, Blair thinks it is "not enough" to address the problem. She wants the global community to recognise it "on a large scale".

A recent report by the Loomba Trust report points out that in several developing countries, widows are forced to marry their husband's brothers or enter into polygamous marriages, and are often subjected to sexual abuse by male members of their husband's extended families.

Cheated out of their inheritance, many widows are kicked out of their family homes along with their children. They are often forced to live on the streets, where they fall prey to the worst kinds of abuse, violence, and sexual exploitation.

In Afghanistan, Blair said, decades of fighting have left two million widows who are not allowed to make a living outside their homes because it is against custom. The suffering of women in other conflict zones is no less acute.

Most war widows cannot afford to send their children to school or feed them properly, said Blair, adding that the families headed by widows are getting caught in the vicious circle of illiteracy and malnutrition.

Data gathered by the Loomba Trust shows that in several countries, widows have minimal or sometimes no societal support, but are also the only breadwinners of the family. They run a whopping 84.4 percent of female-headed households in Iran, and 79 percent in Indonesia and Burma.

According to the Trust, widows who are the sole supporters of families are among the poorest people in urban informal labour markets and constitute large numbers of the marginally employed and rural unemployed.

"The appalling treatment just entrenches the cycle of poverty and deprivation," said Blair, "because if the mother has no money, the children are pulled out of school. With no education, they are doomed to spend their lives in most menial jobs if they get work at all."

Blair said it would be "impossible" to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with the increasing number of women becoming widows due to conflicts and the spread of HIV/AIDS.

The MDGs are a series of targets with a deadline of 2015. They include a 50-percent reduction in poverty and hunger; universal primary education; reduction of child mortality by two thirds cutbacks in maternal mortality by three quarters; the promotion of gender equality; and the reversal of the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases.

Although the U.N. promotes the empowerment of women in political participation, financial security, and gender equality in developing nations through agencies such as UNIFEM and UN-HABITAT, Blair said it is important for the world body to increase its focus on the micro level of emancipation of widows.

The report says that most widows in developing countries are also struggling to survive in the face of violent physical and mental abuse. Many widows are forced into prostitution or become victims of human trafficking.

Blair told IPS that even in countries where laws exist to prevent the abuse of widows, lack of awareness and illiteracy impede legal aid.