Name: Kenyan womens fight for their land rights after death of husbands
Uploaded: 2026-01-12T03:02:06.190Z
Duration: 2 min 34 s
Description: Thousands of widows, unaware of their constitutional rights, face losing everything.

Thousands of widows, unaware of their constitutional rights, face losing everything.

Nairobi

Widows in Kenya, such as Rebecca Anyango, face threats of eviction and loss of land from their late husbands' families, often without legal representation. Despite constitutional guarantees of property rights, many women are unaware of these protections and are subject to cultural practices that can result in disinheritance or forced remarriage.

Advocates highlight the lack of legal aid as a major barrier, but recent legislative efforts in Sia County offer hope. A newly passed widow's protection bill seeks to criminalize disinheritance and forced remarriage, and to establish committees for legal support, aiming to break the cycle of poverty and displacement affecting widows and their children.

Kenyan women's fight for their land rights after death of husbands

Rebecca Anyango has called this house in Kenya her home for the past 26 years, but now she's wondering how long she'll be able to stay. As a widow, she's been threatened with eviction for years by her late husband's family, who claim she has no inheritance rights. This year they filed a lawsuit, and the 70-year-old has no legal representation. This is where I buried my husband. And my husband died 16 years ago. The grave is here. Where do I take the grave? Where do I take my grandchildren? Anyango is one of thousands of women in Western Kenya who face losing their land, unaware that the country's constitution guarantees their right to ownership. In addition, in rural areas, widowhood in some ethnic groups can come with certain cultural expectations or practices that could be considered illegal. After the death of her husband, Anne Bonareri fought against one of them, in which a widow is taken in as a wife by her brother-in-law. They took everything, and I was left with one photo of the father. My mother-in-law came to my house and told me that they have talked overnight, and they have agreed that my eldest brother-in-law is going to inherit me. Women's advocates say the lack of legal assistance is a key challenge. But there is some hope. In November, the local assembly in Sia County, where Anyango lives, unanimously passed a widow's protection bill. So we don't want it to be a conflict of men and women in their communities and their homes, because these widows belong to those homes. We don't want to remove them. But we want to empower the communities and enlighten them that these women, their husbands have died, they've got their rights. If signed by the governor, it will criminalise the disinheritance of women or their forced remarriage and establish welfare committees to help widows access legal aid. This is like a pandemic in our country, and we have seen also so many children who are orphans who have left in the hundreds of thousands. These are children who are left without anything, because once the father dies, the mother is stripped of her dignity, the land is taken, they do not have anywhere to call home. So basically, they are left in limbo and the cycle of poverty continues. Her organisation has had some success in helping women retain their land with the help of pro bono lawyers.

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