In the Horn of Africa, Women’s Poverty Is Generational – CSW68 Side Event Recording

This panel focused on key gender-specific barriers to women’s accumulation of wealth in Somalia, South Sudan, Uganda, and Ethiopia. The panelists addressed laws of succession, inheritance, marriage, and divorce, as well as the interplay of national law with customary and religious law codes, as these areas of law play a major role in the generational economic disempowerment of women in the Horn. The economic disempowerment of women is a primary and significant barrier to their inclusion in key political and decision-making spaces, platforms and decisions. It is centrally important to dismantle legal and structural barriers to women’s wealth/resources accumulation, as women’s access to wealth and consistent wealth-generation is a necessary condition in order for them to be meaningfully engaged in political and peace processes. Further, more equitable distributions of wealth are associated with increased levels of security and the longevity of peace.

This event took place on 20th March 2024, as a Side Event during the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women.