On protecting widows, Siaya's Bill misses the mark

In many Kenyan communities, widows endure miserable lives due to outdated customary practices such as forced leviratic marriages, sexual cleansing rituals, property confiscation, and eviction from matrimonial homes. They are also subjected to battery by in-laws, false accusations, witch hunts, and demeaning funerary rites. This is why the move by Elida Anyango, a member of the Siaya County Assembly, to sponsor the Siaya County Widows Protection Bill 2023, set to be introduced for debate in July, is capturing attention.

The Bill focuses on the "protection and maintenance of neglected, abandoned and destitute widows" primarily through a County Widows Welfare Committee. One notable aspect is its expanded definition of a destitute widow as one who is "stricken with infirmity due to old age, physical disability, chronic ailment, mental imbalance or who has no source of income to support herself and her dependent children." Another commendable feature is the idea of maintaining a county widows' register, which should be a routine practice at the national level as part of data collection for the national census, demographic and health studies, and economic surveys.

Ritual cleansing

Beyond these two elements, however, the Bill is rather weak in various aspects. In the preliminary pages, the Bill refers to widows abandoned by "relatives" but fails to define this term. It is imperative to clarify its scope, given that most communities are exogamous and may consider a wife an outsider, forming the basis of her marriage.

The Bill mentions "substantive equality" as the standard all widows should enjoy but does not define this phrase. The items that constitute widow abuse are over-truncated, and the rubrics in the entire part 3 of the Bill are mixed up. Moreover, some of the actions listed as ritual cleansing are not actually so and do not apply to widows only, such as the launch of the planting season (golo kodhi) among the Luo community.

The Bill intrinsically assumes that Siaya County is mono-ethnic and that only the Luo community mistreats widows. It also contains vague expressions such as "taboo violation" and "forced sharing," and in many places, the objects are mixed up with proposed administrative action.

The composition of the proposed committee is also problematic. Firstly, it assumes that all widows are organized in groups and will unanimously elect two representatives. Secondly, assigning the county governor the authority to appoint the committee's secretary creates room for political manipulation. Thirdly, cultural experts, gender academics, and faith-based organizations are not included. Fourthly, the committee is overpopulated with non-widows and people who are most likely to be men. It is also unclear why there should be two representatives of civil society organizations.

The functions of the committee are also perfunctory and cannot transform the situation of widows. In fact, what should be the substantive functions (training, civic education, research) are misplaced under financial and miscellaneous provisions, missing out on critical elements such as public interest litigation and representation of widows in decision-making platforms.

Widow eviction

The Bill proposes the establishment of the Directorate of Widowed Persons but refers to it as a department elsewhere, even though these are distinct structures in public service discourse. This directorate is also envisaged to be a mere secretariat implementing committee decisions rather than being the driver of policy and program development. In terms of cascading the committee, the Bill moves from the county to ward levels without replication at the sub-county level.

The listed offenses are also meaningless and do not specify the penalties for actions such as evicting a widow. One wonders whether an aggrieved widow cannot seek relief from statutory laws such as the Marriage Act, Matrimonial Property Act, Protection against Domestic Violence Act, the Constitution of Kenya, and the regional and international treaties Kenya has signed, which cover all the issues raised in the Bill.

The sponsor should probably recast it into a county program implemented by the department in charge of gender issues and make it comprehensive by addressing the plight of widowers too, as they face neglect, economic exploitation, loss of status and authority, poor physical and mental health, property disputes, and abandonment by children.

In its current form, the Bill is superfluous, half-baked, and premature for debate.

The writer is a lecturer in Gender and Development Studies at South Eastern Kenya University ([email protected]).