COHRE Women and Housing Rights Fact Sheet No.5 Housing Rights of Displaced Women

In times of armed conflict, after being forcibly removed from their original homes, women are at risk of additional abuse once displaced

Displacement of persons around the world is caused by, inter alia, civil conflicts, ethnic and xenophobic strife, wars, natural disasters, and socalled ‘development’ policies Displaced persons often flee with few or none of their belongings, leaving behind their homes, lands and communities

Women and Housing Rights THE HOUSING RIGHTS of DISPLACED WOMEN: Restitution, Relocation and Assistance chaos which ensues during conflict or disaster, it is most often women who carry the heaviest burdens as they seek to care for their families while at the same time seeking to ensure their safety and security.

Today, over 80 per cent of the world’s refugees and displaced persons are women and children.

Women who have been displaced from their homes are particularly vulnerable to abuse, whether at the hands of governments, armed groups, or even at the hands of others suffering the same plight of displacement. In the midst of the

Being deprived of housing, land and/or property, and lacking the ability to go back to their previous homes and land, constitute grave dilemmas for displaced women, regardless of whether they have fled across an international border or have stayed displaced within their home country. Very often, displaced women and girls desire to return to the homes they occupied prior to displacement and to be safely reintegrated back within their original communities, yet are prevented from doing so due to gender-based violence and discrimination.

In fact, displaced women and girls face unique problems at all stages of displacement, largely due to the prevalence of gender-based violence and gender-based discrimination. The United Nations Special Representative on internally displaced persons has noted that “displaced women are particularly vulnerable to genderspecific violence as the protection afforded to them by their homes and communities disappears and the stress of displacement becomes manifest in the family unit.” The Special Representative also noted “such abuses include physical and sexual attacks, rape, domestic violence and sexual harassment, increased spousal battering and marital rape.”

Additionally, displaced women are often forced to exchange sex for basic necessities (i.e. food and housing) as well as for protection, additional aid and access to records.

So-called ‘gender neutral’ policies during land redistribution to returnees

may re-confine women to their former subordinate position in terms of land ownership by allocating land only to male household ‘heads.’

Women whose husbands are killed face challenges of widowhood and caring for orphans single handedly in addition to dealing with the other challenges of day to day survival. Under many customary law systems, ownership of property often depends on possession and occupation. When people are displaced, the property they previously possessed will then be in the hands of others. In the myriad of countries where genderbased bias prevails with regards to property, displaced women are at risk because if the husbands or male family members die or they are unable to reunite with them during displacement, women risk losing their property since any ‘legal’ entitlement they may have

had to the property emanated from their deceased or missing husbands or male family members. Their inability to re-access land and property in such instances may hinder their return.

All refugees and displaced persons have the right to have restored to them any housing, land and/or property of which they were arbitrarily or unlawfully deprived, or to be compensated for any housing, land and/or property that is factually impossible to restore as determined by an independent, impartial tribunal.

The United Nations Principles on Housing and Property Restitution for Refugees and Displaced Persons reaffirm the entitlement of displaced women to housing, land and property restitution. The Principles highlight the rights of displaced women to “voluntary return in safety and dignity, legal security of tenure, property ownership, equal access to inheritance, as well as the use, control of and access to housing, land and property.” These are all areas where women and girls have traditionally been disadvantaged.

The Principles also seek to eliminate the gender bias which is evidenced by the recognition of men as ‘heads of households,’ a concept which, when applied, disadvantages women by ensuring that men are primarily provided with formal title to housing and land, or other property ownership rights which leave women without legal security to their homes.