Strong link between women's land rights, poverty and trafficking

* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.

 

By Zoey Chenitz,

Fellow, Landesa Center for Women’s Land Rights

 

Women’s rights advocates are noting a possible link between land tenure insecurity and human trafficking in women and girls.[1]  Because families without secure access to land are among the world’s poorest population, girls born into those families are at increased risk for being trafficked into forced labor or prostitution.[2]  At the heart of the problem lie two key issues: extreme poverty and traditional attitudes that devalue the worth of women and girls.

Poverty is a significant driver of trafficking in girls for a variety of reasons.  In rare cases, family members may knowingly sell off girls in exchange for much-needed resources.[3]  But more commonly, trafficking is the unintentional consequence of girls’ early marriage.[4] 

For many impoverished families, a young girl often means one more mouth to feed.  Parents mistakenly believe that marrying young daughters to older men will help to secure better living standards for the girls and will relieve financial pressures on the family. 

In addition, traditional marriage customs, which value marriage to young brides and require payment of dowry by the bride’s family to the family of the groom also contribute to early marriage of girls.[5]  Because the size of a bride’s dowry is typically smaller or nonexistent for very young brides,[6] poor families face added economic pressures that may compel them to marry their daughters off at a very young age. 

But, in many cases, human traffickers use marriage as a pretext to obtain access to girls from poor, uneducated, and unsuspecting communities.  In other cases, girls who are forced into early marriage run away from their husbands or are sold by their husbands after a period of time, only to end up working as prostitutes and often at the mercy of human traffickers. 

In many patrilineal cultures, sons are regarded as the future caretakers of the family while girls are seen as transient members of the household who will soon marry away to another family.  As a result, poor birth families can be reluctant to invest in girls’ education and to pass valuable family assets onto daughters who will leave the family. 

Breaking the cycle of poverty and encouraging greater familial investment in daughters may be an important step toward winning the fight against trafficking in women and girls.[7]  And because lack of secure land rights is one of the best predictors for extreme poverty, women’s rights advocates are beginning to recognize the importance of comprehensively addressing the related issues of land rights, marriage practices, customary attitudes toward women, and problems such as human trafficking.

For example, with support from the Nike Foundation, Landesa is working to address these issues in India’s West Bengal Province.  Through a series of girls’ groups, boys’ groups, and broader community conversations, Landesa will encourage community members to explore and understand the various links between poverty, land rights, dowry, and early marriage, including the increased risks of trafficking in girls. 

Through such work, advocates are helping to address the entrenched problem of poverty and are helping to promote new ways of thinking about the roles of women and children within the family and society.  Because secure land rights help rural families to escape the cycle of poverty, they may also be an important means of reducing the incidence of human trafficking in women and girls.