Recognizing the importance of addressing the needs and acknowledging the crucial roles of widows, of all ages, in the context of family support, poverty reduction, discrimination, gender-based violence, peace-building and the HIV/AIDS pandemic;
Aware of the unprecedented increase in the numbers of widows in the last decades due to armed conflict, ethnic cleansing, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, girl-child marriage to older partners, and many other factors;
Noting the absence of reliable statistics on this issue and its general neglect by governments and the international community;
Aware that lack of rights to inheritance, land and property, social stigma and the prevalence of harmful traditional practices have disastrous consequences not only for the widows but for their children, especially their daughters, depriving them of shelter, food and education, and putting them at risk of economic and sexual exploitation;
Noting that in spite of international and national legislation to eliminate discrimination against women, widows' lives, being mostly determined by discriminatory interpretations of custom or religion, have not benefited from these laws;
Further noting that widowhood is a root cause of poverty and that poverty breeds conflict;
Conscious that widowhood remains the most neglected of all gender and human rights issues:
THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL OF WOMEN Calls upon all member National Councils
a) to urge their respective Governments to ensure that widows have full equality within society, by removing all forms of discrimination against widows and their families, including harmful traditional practices; and by providing them with full rights to ownership of land and inheritance rights, and with equal rights to social support and financial benefits;
b) to support the development of widows' associations in order that their voices may be heard in formulation of policy in those areas;
c) with the assistance of the ICW Permanent Representatives to the United Nations, to urge their governments to support the call for the Secretary-General of the United Nations to commission a Special Report on the Situation of Widows in Conflict and Post-Conflict Scenarios, and for the United Nations to establish mechanisms to fill the gap in data and ensure that the voices of widows are heard in peace-building and reconstruction deliberations, in the spirit of UN SCR 1325 also SCR 1820 and the Millennium Development Goals.
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Source: International Council of Women (ICW-CIF) — 32nd General Assembly, Johannesburg, South Africa, October 13–20, 2009. Resolution No. 2.
