Responses to the Formalization of Rural Women’s Land Rights in the Ethiopian Plural Justice System: The Case Study of Sidaama Regional State
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Date
2024-07
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The dissertation investigates the localization of women‘s rights to land in Ethiopia by analyzing global,
regional, national and local norms and standards, institutional and practical responses using the Sidaama
Regional State as a case study. In doing so, the study challenges a diffusionist view which claims that a norm
made at a global space through transnational entities will always have a linear or trickledown effect at the
local space. The study identifies the process of translation and, localization of norms by identifying various
actors involved in these processes and analyzing their roles in (re)making, (re)constructing and
(re)interpreting rural women‘s land rights. To this end, the study investigates the roles of private and public
actors and court practices regarding rural women land rights before and after the introduction of joint land
registration and certification in the name of a husband and wife/wives (formalization of land rights).
The study applies a dogmatic method of legal analysis, case and document analysis and interviews with key
informants to grasp the trends and identify the lacuna in the policy and institutional frameworks in protection
of rural women‘s constitutional and legal right to land in the context of a plural justice system.
The findings of the study demonstrate that the state-centeric land formalization process which has taken
place since 1997 has been instrumental in empowering women at the household level. This has taken place in
the context of gendered social norms that affect rural women‘s right to access, use and control land in the
Sidaama Regional State. The land registration and certification process has raised rural women‘s
consciousness of their land rights which contributed to an increase in the number of claims brought by
women before the formal justice system such as cases related with women‘s land inheritance rights, division
of land during divorce that involves polygamous marriages and transactions related to land. Nonetheless, the
decisions by courts and constitutional adjudicatory bodies are inconsistent regarding these cases. This is
attributed to the lack of uniform gender sensitive approaches in the adjudication of rural women‘s land rights
issues, gender blind laws, gaps in the implementation of land certification program and lack of awareness.
Land certification has also contributed to bringing changes in some of the applicable rules of the customary
justice system towards women‘s inheritance rights in the Sidaama Regional State. Women's land rights
through the certification program have been introduced in a social context where women's land ownership is
a foreign concept and has influenced changes in some of the entrenched gendered social norms through time.
However, the lack of women participation in the customary justice system and the prevalent gendered social
norms have resulted in decisions that are not in tandem with women‘s constitutional rights to land.
The study concludes that norms which are adopted at a global level with an expectation to have universal
application are not always accepted as they are at the local level. The local actors respond to such norms in a
multiplicity of ways. The legitimacy and enforcement of these global norms depends to a large extent on the
existing gendered social norms which could change through time by adopting context-based and bottom-up
approach.