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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Local Norms, Institutions, and Women's Property Rights in Rural Kenya
Author:Nyamu-Musembi, Celestine
Year:2003
Periodical:East African Journal of Peace and Human Rights
Volume:9
Issue:2
Pages:255-289
Language:English
Geographic term:Kenya
Subjects:gender relations
customary law
land law
women
Women's Issues
Law, Human Rights and Violence
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
Law, Legal Issues, and Human Rights
Equality and Liberation
Abstract:This article draws from the practices of administrative and informal social institutions at the local level in an eastern Kenyan district, and identifies features that are favourable to the realization of gender equality and features that impede such realization. The author illustrates her arguments with examples from research she conducted in Makueni district in 1998-1999. The institutions she refers to are clans, forums for informal dispute resolution before local administrators, and the quasi-traditional Land Adjudication Committees established by the government in areas currently undergoing formal registration of title to land. The examples focus largely on gender relations around access to and control of property, particularly land. The author concludes that proponents of gender equality ought to abandon approaches that simply call for the eradication of cultural practices that contravene international human rights principles. Her approach is pragmatic: as long as the reality of poor access to formal judicial institutions due to cost and inadequate decentralization of institutions persists, people will need some kind of forum to resort to when interpersonal negotiations fail. For now, the semi-formal dispute resolution forums facilitated by local administrators, and the clan-based practices offer such a forum. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]
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