Land for Peasant Feminists in Kenya

ORGANIZE! AMPLIFY! RESIST!

Land for Peasant Feminists in Kenya

ORGANIZE! AMPLIFY! RESIST!

-10% of €5500

€ -514 reached in total

-861 days left



We currently secured -0.09 hectares of our goal of 4 hectares of land.



Kenyan Peasants League's Women Collective are crowdfunding to buy 4 hectares of land in Migori County for women affected by land-grabbing and gender-based violence.

The money will be used to buy land and building materials for enough homes to still leave land open for the women to grow their own food together. We have estimated the price of land and building materials, to be 5.500 Euro pr. hectare.

About

The Kenyan Peasants League’s (KPL) Women Collective brings together women peasants who are members of the KPL and organizes itself using peasant feminist approaches, including rights of women to own land, seeds, water and access to resource governance structures, and dismantling the patriarchy by deconstructing the logic of power that is male dominated.

The KPL is peasant movement based in Kenya and is a part of the global peasant movement La Via Campesina. The KPL fights for agroecology, food and seed sovereignty, climate justice and peasant feminism. The KPL is made up of of 12 clusters in Machakos, Migori, Nairobi and Siaya counties in Kenya, and there are about 10-25 farmers in each cluster.

Kenyan Peasants League Website

KPL Twitter

KPL Facebook

La Via Campesina



Why?

As the Kenyan Peasants League's Women Collective we have seen a lot of cases of women being chased out of their land, and women facing gender-based violence with nowhere to go, and because we do not have the funds to support them KPL Women Collective are crowdfunding money to buy land for these women to have a safe haven.  


KPL Women Collective conducted a case study on women’s communal land rights in ten clusters, through fields interviews and documenting the stories through videos, with support from Coventry University. The target groups were young women, married women, divorced women, widows and also men, with the aim to include all their perspective on women’s access to communal land and decision-making.

What we saw is how patriarchal values are keeping women from exercising their constitutional rights to land, by chasing them of their land and grabbing it. Especially widows are at risk of having their land taken away by their late husband’s family.

Another issue women face is gender-based violence in their homes, with many of these women not having a safe place to go to escape their situation, especially in rural areas. Our case studies in urban areas showed that violence against women is also deeply connected to women’s access to land.



Land is a feminist issue

Losing your access to land is both an issue of housing and an issue of livelihoods, as most of these women are peasant farmers who eat what they grow. Having access to land to live on and farm on will be life changing for these women. Land is a feminist issue, and there is no food sovereignty without feminism.

We are raising funds to buy land for these victims of land grabbing and a safe space for victims of gender-based violence. This will provide the women with the stability of a home, and the possibility to sustain themselves by growing their own food together, while we support them to fight for justice in their cases.



Susan was chased out of her home by her husband, who married and chased her and her children out of the family land. And she was denied her constitutional right to land by her parents and brother. Now her and her children live in an unsafe town center, where she tries her best to make a living by selling chapati by the road side.


CONTENT WARNING - GENDER BASED VIOLENCE

Sara is a peasant feminist activist, and she shares her story as a survivor of gender-based violence, by her husband. Muzee is a term for husband or respected elder man in Swahili. Sara explains how it is crucial to make sure women are part of decision making processes and that their rights to inhereting land is respected, and we see her attend a KPL Women Collective meeting in her cluster.
This is John Titus, who is a member of KPL and a feminist activist. He talks about how respecting women's rights to land ownership is a crucial fight for the KPL.

How?

We want to buy 4 hectares of land in Migori county where we have the most members, and will be able to reach the most women. We are hoping this will be the first step to having communal spaces like this in all the counties of Kenya we are active in.


The money will be used to buy land and materials to build enough houses that still leave enough land open for the women to grow their own food together. We have estimated the price of 1 hectare of land with houses is 5.500 Euro pr. hectare. So we need 22.000 Euroes to reach our goal!

If we reach beyond 4 hectares anything is possible! We can buy land in other counties to house and support women affected by land-grabbing and gender-based violence. We can buy extra land, for all of the women collective to organize, learn and farm together. We can build more buildings for women to hold large meetings and workshops in. We can buy land to have plant nurseries of indigenous species to share freely with the community. Anything is possible!


These pictures are from a farmer-to-farmer workshop for the KPL Women Collective, learning about agroecology on a member's farm

Please, support our crowdfunding, and help us support the women affected by land grabbing and violence in our communities.

-10% of €5500

€ -514 reached in total

-861 days left