Local volunteers traveled to tithe partner county Nepal to build Habitat homes just over one year ago. While there, they learned about the challenges of legal land ownership for women and brought back their thoughts and concerns. We are thrilled to share this message from the director of Habitat Nepal about the substantial progress made.
Dear Jamie,
I was remembering our email interchange about a year ago – right around Easter – when you raised the issue of women’s land rights, and in particular, ensuring women’s legal ownership of the residential properties where we are building. You need to know that since that conversation, Habitat Nepal has taken on this issue as a core focus in our programming! In fact, we have achieved several significant outcomes in just this past year. For example:
- In our Haliya housing project, which unlocked federal funds for land and housing for landless formerly
Haliya women, formerly bonded/enslaved agricultural workers, proudly holding their new land titles.
bonded/enslaved agricultural workers, we ensured that women’s names were on the land titles. We are doing the same in ALL or our projects that entail land grants.
- The Department of Land (that funded the Haliya project) requested that we assist them in developing procedural guidelines for the implementation of their land and housing subsidies across the country, and they agreed to a provision requiring that all land granted by the government include women on the property title.
- We are now working to strengthen the joint land titling requirement in projects where Habitat helps families build on their existing land. Since many do not possess formal title, this involves training/advocacy on formalizing land ownership, as a first step.
We are now conceptualizing a very ambitious proposal to Co-Impact (supported by Gates and Rockefeller, among others) to expand women’s land rights even further, through government, civil society, and market actors. Isn’t this exciting?!?
So, I must THANK YOU for raising thoughtful questions a year ago. May you know that this opened up a whole journey for us, that is far from over.
Easter blessings to you and EJC Habitat!
Namaste,
Christy Stickney
National Director, Habitat for Humanity International – Nepal