Widowhood causes poverty among women
Widowhood has been described as the single most likely factor to cause increasing poverty among women across the world.
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As of 2010, it was estimated that at least 245 million women around the world had been widowed and more than 115 million of them lived in devastating poverty, according to a report titled "Invisible Forgotten Sufferers: The Plight of Widows around the World.”
At the ongoing summit of UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in New York, the UN Women, together with other women’s rights organisations, has called for more support for such women, as a step towards the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
The CSW is being held on the theme, “Challenges and achievements for women and girls in the post 2015 MDG framework”.
Statistics
Countries with the highest number of widows as of 2010 were China with 43 million; India with 42.4 million; the United States with 13.6 million; Indonesia with 9.4 million; Japan with 7.4 million; Russia with 7.1 million; Brazil with 5.6 million; Germany with 5.1 million and Bangladesh and Vietnam with about 4.7 million each.
It is estimated that over 500 million dependents and adult children of widows are caught in a vicious underworld in which disease, forced servitude, homelessness and violence are rampant and youngsters are denied schooling, enslaved or preyed upon by human traffickers.
According to the women’s groups, there is the growing concern of more women being widowed in the world today due to armed conflicts, diseases and insurgencies.
They said harmful practices and other persecution against widows and their children were not limited to the developing world, noting that large numbers of widows were also found in Europe and Central Asia.
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However, statistics in the developing world, especially in Africa, are unavailable, and, therefore, the women groups have also called on countries to come out with detailed sex disaggregated data so as to establish the number of women living as widows on the continent.
Call for action
The groups present at the parallel event included the Association of War-Affected Women, Guild of Service, the Mama Zimbi Foundation, Widows for Peace through Democracy, and Women for Human Rights.
Others are Single Women Group and other non-governmental groups such as the Federation of International Women Lawyers (FIDA) and ABANTU. These were at the event on Wednesday on the theme, “Widowhood: A root cause of poverty across the generations”. The groups called on governments to fill the gaps in data collection on numbers, ages, lifestyles, needs and roles of widows to include “widows” as a specific category in national action plans, as well as criminalise all actions by state or non-state actors that deprive widows of their rights or coerce them into degrading and life-threatening and harmful traditional practices.
They also called on the UN to establish a special desk to address widowhood issues, appoint a UN special representative on widowhood and commission a special report on widows and wives missing in conflict and post-conflict environments.
Ghana's interventions
Making a statement, the Executive Director of Mama Zimbi Widows Foundation, Ghana, Madam Akumaa Mama Zimbi, said her foundation was working at empowering widows in Ghana with economically viable skills.
She called for support from governments to widows to make life better for them.
The Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Nana Oye Lithur, in a statement, lamented the atrocities committed against widows such as those narrated by other contributors from Nigeria and Bangladesh, saying that some women are required to be "cleansed," some accused of murder or witchcraft and some required to marry another member of the family, while many were disinherited and forced out of their homes.
She said the Government of Ghana had, therefore, put in place social intervention programmes such as the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty Programme (LEAP), to ensure that vulnerable women were supported to take care of themselves and their immediate families.
Writer's email-rebecca.quaicoe-duho@graphic.com.gh