June 23rd is International Widows Day and it’s a day to shine a light on the plight of widows and their children worldwide.
The efforts to recognise the plight of widows has been the focal point of the Loomba Foundation which has, for nearly two decades, delivered programmes to educate the children of poor widows and empower widows so that they can make a living and regain their dignity.
While pressure groups and local non-governmental agencies heroically sought to help the millions in dire need, there was minimal awareness in society or governments of this important issue, which received little or no attention from policymakers, the media and even the United Nations.
In 2005, The Loomba Foundation launched a campaign to persuade the United Nations to adopt an annual day of action which resulted, on December 22, 2010, in the unanimous decision by the UN General Assembly, on a motion by the government of Gabon, to adopt June 23 as the annual, UN-designated International Widows’ Day. Incidentally, the date chosen -June 23rd was the day Lord Loomba’s mother became a widow at 37 years of age.
Since policymaking must be based on evidence, the Loomba Foundation began a research programme to shine a light on this issue, uncovering its scale, its many forms, its roots and its devastating impact on the economy of many countries and the world.
The World Widows Report 2015 published as a result of the research has provided researchers, aid agencies and governments with the means to understand the issue and to form policies capable of addressing it.
This year’s theme is “invisible people, Invisible problems” and I must say it is very apt. Widowhood is a very invisible problem which affects people in ways that other people cannot comprehend until they are personally involved.
We all know widows and their children, but because we are not aware of the realities of their lives especially because we have our own problems staring us in the face, it is easy to forget them. Added to that is the social stigma attached to being a widow. The society tends to castigate widows as being responsible in some way or the other, of their husband’s deaths, leading to an unwillingness of people to relate closely with them so as not to suffer the same fate. These reasons ensure that most widows become voiceless in the society in which they reside and because they are not socially recognized they become invisible.
Society is however affected by the presence of the “invisible people” and the severity of their “invisible problems” mainly as a result of the lack of a social welfare system and the lack of enforcement of inheritance laws in favour of the widows.
The injustices done to widows are many and range from the mundane to the barbaric and inhumane. Widows are often forcibly evicted from their homes by the husband’s family after his death and a lot of women fear invoking inheritance rights because it puts them in conflict with the family of their husband and for the fear of retribution or repercussions ( physically , spiritually and socially) on their children.
Thankfully, things are changing albeit slowly but more and more widows and their children are beginning to exercise their rights of inclusion into the society, rights of enforcing the inheritance laws available to them and an advocating for the end of the rites that debase and dehumanize widows.
We however, need people to do more to ensure that the lives of widows and their children are better than before.
We need people to take a closer look at what goes on in their environment, societies, villages, towns meetings. We need people to stand up against the horrid practices that are carried out in the name of culture. We need people to stop insisting that widows have no right to a pleasurable and happy life just because their partners died. We need to educate the illiterate and ignorant including the widows themselves who lack knowledge of their rights in law.
We need grants by government and non-governmental agencies for education of the widow and her children, women empowerment ( not the giving of foodstuff periodically, causing grown women to line up for a cup or two of rice in the name of empowerment). We need people to advocate for change, after all culture is subject to change and lastly, we need women to stand up for one another especially as we are the main perpetrators of these actions against other women and the foot soldiers of patriarchy.
We need people to understand that every woman, daughter, sister, cousin, friend and lover is a potential widow.