(De-)Politicising women’s collective action: international actors and land inheritance in post-war Burundi

Abstract

This article focuses on women’s collective action promoting land inheritance in Burundi. It aims to discuss the role of international actors in social transformations, questioning to what extent they have shaped women’s collective action since the 1970s, in particular since the country’s president took the official decision to stop the legislative and political process for adopting a law in 2011. The article argues that international actors are a central factor in (de-)politicisation by playing the role of a third party in the relationship between women’s associations and the state. These interactions produce a particular form of mobilisation that promotes law as a tool to build, frame and provide answers to the land issue.

[(Dé-)Politiser l’action collective féminine. Les acteurs internationaux et la succession des femmes à la terre au Burundi de l’après-guerre.] Cet article traite de l’action collective féminine sur la succession des femmes à la terre au Burundi. Il interroge le rôle des acteurs internationaux dans les transformations sociales de l’après-guerre, en se demandant dans quelle mesure ces derniers ont influencé l’action collective féminine depuis les années 1970, et en particulier depuis que le président burundais a pris la decision de mettre fin au processus politique et législatif d’adoption d’une loi sur la succession. L’article montre que les acteurs internationaux sont un facteur central de (dé-)politisation en jouant le rôle de tiers dans la relation entre les associations de femmes et l’État. Ces interactions produisent une forme particulière de mobilisation qui promeut le droit comme outil de construction, de cadrage et de résolution de la question foncière.

Keywords:

• women’s collective action
• land inheritance
• international actors
• politicisation
• Burundi

Mots-clés:

• action collective féminine 
• succession à la terre 
• acteurs internationaux 
• politisation 
• Burundi

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Jacobo Grajales, Alice Pannier, the coordinators of this special issue – Emmanuelle Bouilly and Ophélie Rillon, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions and comments.

Notes on contributor

Marie Saiget is a PhD candidate at Sciences Po Paris/CERI and adjunct lecturer at the University of Lille 2/CERAPS. Her current research is on international programmes and women’s collective action in post-war Burundi. She recently published Les bonnes pratiques des organisations internationales (Paris, Les Presses de Sciences Po, 2015). Her last article, ‘Women’s participation in African peace negotiations: cooperating with UN agencies in Burundi and Liberia’, was issued in Peacebuilding review (2016/1).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Women are only the usufructuaries of land property. Single women, divorced women or widows can receive unequal pieces of land compared with those received by their brothers. They only exercise a life interest in this land, without any possibility of passing it down to their offspring.

2 Burundi has one of the highest population densities on the continent (about 400 people per square kilometre), with 90% of the population dependent on agriculture. The population is growing at a rate of 3.1% (data for 2013: http://donnees.banquemondiale.org/indicateur/SP.POP.GROW, accessed December 13, 2014). As a report of the International Crisis Group notes: ‘bad land governance is deeply rooted and old regulation mechanisms are obsolete, thus contributing to conflict, social tensions and a malnutrition rate close to 75%’ (International Crisis Group 2014). In 2012, 80.2% of Burundians owned land but only 17.7% of women had access to land ownership compared with 62.5% of men (Statistiques du Recensement Général de la Population et de l’Habitat 2012, 58). Ninety per cent of land certificates established by communal services are on behalf of men.

3 Collective action is defined as ‘the product of interactions, mutual perceptions, and expectations, called strategic intervention’ (Oberschall 1993, 3). ‘Women’s collective action’ refers to the collective action of women (composition of groups), as women (identity building) (I take inspiration from the definition of the ‘women’s movement’ in Bereni, Chauvin, and Jaunait 2008, 164), for women. Indeed, in Burundi, collective action on land inheritance is mainly composed of women (mostly urban and educated women members of human rights and women’s associations, and women in politics) who defend this right as women, but without labelling themselves as ‘feminist’ – a term that is perceived as too close to Western movements; and for women, especially for rural women who are primarily affected by the absence of this right.

4 I conducted about 20 in-depth interviews with Burundian women activists and women in politics as well as with UN and NGO employees (whose identity I do not always give for reasons of confidentiality). Taking advantage of two internships – at UN Women in 2012 and at CARE International in 2013 – I led observations and collected information on informal and sometimes ‘hidden’ processes of collective action. I also drew upon archival data from the UN, NGOs and CSOs as well as press articles.

5 This is not to say that there is not an international agenda on women’s inheritance to land: on the contrary: ‘women’s property and inheritance rights have been identified as a global strategic priority to meet Millennium Development Goal 3 (“Promote gender equality and empower women”) at the Millennium Summit +5 in 2005 (United Nations 2012)’; also ‘the Convention for the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) called for ‘agrarian reform and redistribution of land to ensure the right of women, regardless of marital status, to share redistributed land on equal terms with men’ (Naybor 2014, 892).

6 According to Virginie Nyarusage, in 1945, the chefferie tribunal recognised the right of women to inherit from their father, on condition that he had decided accordingly during his life. In 1964, Burundi's Cour de cassation (Court of Appeal) recognised the right of single, widowed or divorced women to inherit (Nyarusage 1999).

7 Such as the Eastern Africa Sub-Regional Support Initiative for the Advancement of Women (EASSI) sub-regional conference in 2001, and, 10 years later in Nairobi, a conference on the right of African women to land, with the participation of the Collectif des Associations et ONGs Féminines du Burundi (CAFOB).

Additional information

Funding

Fieldwork in Burundi and the research upon which this article is based were made possible by funding from the Institut Émilie du Châtelet.