HEALTH-ASIA: When Hearth Is No Longer Her Home
Zofeen Ebrahim* – IPS/TerraViva
COLOMBO, Aug 18 2007 (IPS) – To Princey Mangalika from Sri Lanka, AIDS has come to mean hatred, hunger, humiliation and death.
Jury at Women's Court Credit: UNDP
The people in her own village, who had been ready to help her sick husband, turned hostile once they learned of his positive status. But after his death, their anger became more pronounced, directed towards her and her two daughters.
The people around wanted us to go away immediately. I was shocked to see that my husband s brother was the leader of the vigilantes. He was the most vocal that we leave the place, while his old father looked inert or at best helpless. Overnight, a virus had made us outcasts in the eyes of our own family, she said.
Then, one night, their house was burned down. The house was ours, legally registered in the names of my husband and myself. Even then, I couldn t protect it. The land where the house was situated is now under my brother-in-law s custody. Even today, I dread going there. To reclaim it, I would need to go to court, I would need legal support, Mangalika explained. Who is there to advise me? Who is there to take up my case? Who is there to deliver justice for me?
Mangalika was among 20 women living with HIV, giving their heart-rending testimonies in an imaginary court organised by the United Nations Development Programme s Regional HIV and Development Programme at the 8th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific (ICAAP), which is being held in the Sri Lankan capital from Aug. 19-23.
The jam-packed session was organised in partnership with the Asian Women s Human Rights Council (AWHRC), the Joint United Nations Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS) and the United Nations Fund for Women (UNIFEM). The jury included Justice Shiranee Tilakawardane of Sri Lanka, Justice Kalyan Shrestha of Nepal, Cherie Honkala of the United States and Lawrence Liang of India.
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After my husband passed away in 1999, my in-laws beat me up and threw me and my son out of their home. I was so overcome with grief that even when they demanded a signed affidavit giving up all my property rights, I didn t give it any thought, young Ujjwala Nandkumar from India said, narrating how she was stripped of her right to property and dispossessed by family. Later, it dawned on me that I was left with nothing.
And then there was 45-year old Sandya Kumari, who worked all her life as a migrant worker and whose remittances had allowed her family to build a home. But after finding about her HIV status, her husband not only deserted her but took away her two children. I live in the homes of others. I stay one week in one place and another week in another place. My brothers have threatened me and my children don t want anything to do with me.
Recognising the nexus between women with HIV and poverty in these times of extreme economic marginalisation, Anand Grover from the Lawyers Collective in India pointed out that violations of women s right to property are severe and pervasive in developing countries.
The tragedy multiplies, he said, when these women are HIV-positive or were wives of those who died of AIDS. Many women are excluded from inheriting property, evicted from their homes by in-laws and end up impoverished and doubly vulnerable.
This can only be encountered by empowering women, Grover points out. Women have the right to maintenance but which is denied. (They) have right to residence but are thrown out, and have a right to a safe home but often subjected to violence.
Dispossession can take on myriad forms, ranging from shelter and home to property, from food security to sustainable livelihood, and from support and care system to access to treatment and life-saving drugs. The women talked of how their plight is often aggravated by having to take care of spouses, deal with illnesses, run homes and even after doing all that, be denied access to their children.
Giving its verdict and taking a strong exception to institutional discrimination, particularly in relation to women s rights to housing, property and inheritance, the jury called for legislative equality. Recognising the barriers to inheritance rights and forced evictions, it said steps must be taken to overcome and address the economic and social challenges women face.
Each story given before the women s court was more tragic than the other. As the women spoke, some broke down as if the hurt were still fresh. But hidden within each and every story were also tales of victory, triumph and resistance, and of finally finding a reason to live.
The first time that 26-year-old Yen from Vietnam decided to stand up for her rights was after her husband s death in 2004. My in-laws wanted to expel me from the house. I was not their responsibility any more. But I knew that we (my daughter and I) had rights to stay there, so I decided not to move. That was the first time I dared to stand up and fight for our rights in front of the neighbourhood.
Today, although Yen receives no support from her in-laws and earns her keep, she refuses to leave the house that she had lived in with her husband. (*Terra Viva is an IPS publication)