IWHR CLINIC IN THE NEWS

Clinic Students win case before the UN CEDAW Committee:

GENEVA (1 April 2015) – Tanzania should take steps to revise or repeal laws, customs and practices that discriminate against women, a UN Committee has said after considering the case of two widows who were prevented from inheriting their late husbands’ property and were left homeless.

The Geneva-based Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) issued its call after considering a complaint by the women, who under local customary laws could not inherit upon their respective husband’s death and were subsequently evicted from their homes by their in-laws.

In 2005, the women, referred to as E.S and S.C, began legal proceedings, arguing that inheritance provisions be struck down because they contravened Tanzania’s Constitution and the country’s international obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, which it ratified in 1985. They also argued that millions of other women in Tanzania experience the same violations they have faced as a result of discriminatory customary laws.

In 2006, the High Court agreed that the provisions were discriminatory but said it would not overturn them as doing so would “be opening a Pandora’s box, with all the seemingly discriminative customs from our 120 tribes plus following the same path.”

Customary law is in force in 30 districts, making it the most commonly applied form of law in Tanzania. Regarding widows, it states that she “has no share of the inheritance if the deceased left relatives of his clan; her share is to be cared for by her children, just as she cared for them.”

In its findings, the 23-member Committee said that Tanzania should grant the two women adequate reparation and compensation, noting that they had been left “economically vulnerable, with no property, no home to live in with their children and no form of financial support.”

CEDAW called on Tanzania to ensure that rights guaranteed under the Convention have precedence over inconsistent and discriminatory provisions. The Committee noted that States parties have an obligation to adopt measures to amend or abolish “not only existing laws and regulations, but also customs and practices that constitute discrimination against women.” This includes countries such as Tanzania that have “multiple legal systems in which different personal status laws apply to individuals on the basis of identity factors such as ethnicity and religion.” Courts should also refrain from resorting to unreasonable and undue delays, CEDAW said, noting that shortcomings in the Tanzanian judiciary had denied the women justice, with their appeal pending before the Court of Appeal for more than six years.

Among several other recommendations, CEDAW called on Tanzania to encourage dialogue on the removal of discriminatory law provisions and provide mandatory training for judges, prosecutors and other judicial personnel on the Convention and the Committee’s jurisprudence. CEDAW said Tanzania should submit a written response within six months, including information on any action taken in light of its recommendations.

*  The Committee adopted its views on 2 March 2015 and published them on 1 April 2015: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/CEDAW/Pages/JurisprudenceSession60.aspx”

Clinic Students win right to divorce for women in Uganda’s Constitutional Court:

In March 2004, as IWHR Clinic students and faculty sat in the courtroom, the justices of the Constitutional Court of Uganda read their decisions from the bench. The next day’s Kampala Monitor newspaper sensationalized the holding—“Wives can divorce cheating husbands,” ran the banner headline—but what the court had done was spectacular: for the first time, the Constitutional Court of Uganda had used the gender equity provisions in the Ugandan Constitution to invalidate a discriminatory law.

The Monitor’s headline: Wives can divorce cheating husbands

With this decision, the court extended to wives the right to divorce based on their husbands’ adultery that the old law gave only to him—a right of great importance in the era of rampant HIV/AIDS. The attorneys of Law and Advocacy for Women-Uganda had won an amazing victory. But it was a victory for Georgetown’s International Women’s Human Rights Clinic as well. The case had begun as a joint project between IWHR Clinic and LAW-U, and Clinic students initially drafted the Constitutional Court petition and brief, working in tandem with the lawyers who later filed the case in Uganda.

LAW-Uganda lawyers prepare to hear the Constitutional Court’s historic decision granting women equal rights with men 

HIGHLIGHTS

The Georgetown Law Alumni Magazine has featured the work of the IWHR Clinic in several articles:

In the Fall/Winter 2007 issue, the Magazine profiled the Clinic’s collaboration and recent successes with graduates of the LAWA program.

In the Fall/Winter 2006 issue, the Magazine described Clinic work in Swaziland as an integral part of the Law Center’s dedication to International Human Rights work.

SCHOLARSHIP AND PUBLICATIONS

Susan Deller Ross & Tamar Ezer, Fact-Finding as a Lawmaking Tool for Advancing Women’s Human Rights, 7 GEO. J. GENDER & L. 331-342 (2006).

Esther Kisaakye, Reflections on the Contribution of Georgetown’s International Women’s Human Rights Clinic to Advancing the Protection of Women’s Human Rights in Uganda & Tanzania, 7 GEO. J. GENDER & L. 343-348 (2006).

Lisa Vollendorf Martin, Using Fact-Finding to Combat Violence Against Women in Ghana, Uganda, and the United States: Lessons Learned as a Clinic Student, Clinic Supervisor, and Practitioner, 7 GEO. J. GENDER & L. 349-356 (2006).

The International Women’s Human Rights Clinic at Georgetown Law & Tanzania’s Women’s Legal Aid Centre, Child Marriage and Guardianship in Tanzania: Robbing Girls of their Childhood and Infantilizing Women, 7 GEO. J. GENDER & L. 357-450 (2006) (Tamar Ezer ed.).

The International Women’s Human Rights Clinic at Georgetown Law & Law and Advocacy for Women in Uganda, Inheritance Law in Uganda: The Plight of Widows and Children, 7 GEO. J. GENDER & L. 451-530 (2006) (Ginger Faulk ed.).

The International Women’s Human Rights Clinic at Georgetown Law & Ghana’s Leadership and Advocacy for Women in Africa – Ghana Alumnae, Inc., Domestic Violence in Ghana: The Open Secret, 7 GEO. J. GENDER & L. 531-598 (2006) (Lisa Vollendorf Martin ed.).

Tamar Ezer, Inheritance Law in Tanzania: The Impoverishment of Widows and Daughters, 7 GEO. J. GENDER & L. 599-662 (2006).

The International Women’s Human Rights Clinic Georgetown University Law Center, Women’s Land and Property Rights in Kenya—Moving Forward into a New Era of Equality: A Human Rights Report and Proposed Legislation, 40 GEO. J. INT’L L. ONLINE 1-126 (2009) (Tzili Mor & Susan Deller Ross eds.).

The International Women’s Human Rights Clinic at Georgetown Law & the Federation of Women Lawyers: Kenya, Empowering Women With Rights to Inheritance – A Report on Amendments to the Law of Succession Act Necessary to Ensure Women’s Human Rights: A Human Rights Report and Proposed Legislation, 40 GEO. J. INT’L L. ONLINE 127-289 (2009) (Susan Deller Ross, Ginger T. Faulk & Dan Gatti eds.).

The International Women’s Human Rights Clinic at Georgetown Law, Women’s Equal Property and Land Rights Hold Key to Reversing Toll of Poverty and HIV/AIDS in Swaziland: A Human Rights Report and Proposed Legislation, 40 GEO. J. INT’L L. ONLINE 291-440 (2009).

The International Women’s Human Rights Clinic at Georgetown Law, The Promise of a New Constitution—Achieving Equal Inheritance Rights for Women in Swaziland: A Human Rights Report and Proposed Legislation, 40 GEO. J. INT’L L. ONLINE 441-620 (2009).

The International Women’s Human Rights Clinic at Georgetown Law, Girls’ Education Under Attack: The Detrimental Impact of Sexual Abuse by Teachers on School Girls’ Human Rights in Kenya: A Human Right Report and Proposed Legislation, 49 GEO. J. INT’L L. 241-416 (2017) (Kristie Bluett ed.).