This Widow’s Relatives Stole Everything. Now She’s Fighting Back. | National Geographic

For [Music] UGA [Music], for SE t b better story is not unique; it's what we see every day in Uganda. The cultural tradition around property grabbing is the effect that when a man dies, the clan is automatically entitled to inherit his entire estate, including his wife, so she's property. In Uganda, our work really is centered around securing the land rights for widows and orphans so that their home or land won't be taken away from them.

In one of the districts where we work, 40% of widows come under attack; one in three actually lose their home. More than 50% of property grabbing cases are violent in nature. We must understand that in these communities, land is everything; land is equated to life. People kill for land. If you have land, then you have a voice.

For [Music] fore for fore [Music] [Music], the Ugandan government has tried immensely to protect widows, starting from the 1995 Constitution, which clearly stipulates that men and women are equal before the law. But the gender norms, traditions, and cultures are so entrenched and deeply rooted in people's everyday lives that culture is what they naturally respond to and not the law. For the police are at the gates of the justice system; the problem is that less than 5% of property grabbing cases are reported to the police. Law enforcement has a duty to challenge them about their cultural values that contradict the law and bring perpetrators to account.

[Music] Most times, widows struggle with having documentation to prove ownership for the piece of land she spent her entire life building with her [Music] husband. It involves endless trips to the court, trying to find one single file, and then of course, the people in charge of the archive store ask her for a bribe. A bribe so that she can get justice. Very few are likely to follow up their case to fruition; many actually give up along the way.

I've often wondered why they don't just give in to the pressure of the members of their communities to just let it go, but there's something I've not yet put a finger on—what it is that it's in some women that they won't settle for less. They won't be denied what they're entitled to, even if it means dying for it. Those women are special; they're really [Music] [Music] special for [Music].