Introduction

After a long process of drafting and negotiations, the government of Rwanda recently adopted a new land policy and a related land law that seek to formalize land rights through official titling. The stated overall objectives of the land law, ‘sustainable economic development’ and ‘social welfare’ (see article 3 of the land law), are to be realized through rural economic transformation, increasing productivity, land consolidation, commercialisation of agriculture, specialization and grouped settlements (imidugudu). Whereas the new land law has already been assessed for its likely impact upon conflict prevention (see Musahara & Huggins 2004), so far no in-depth analysis has been made from a gender perspective.

At face value, Rwanda's new land law endeavours to ensure gender equality in land rights. Article 4, for instance, states that ‘Any discrimination either based on sex or origin in matters relating to ownership or possession of rights over the land is prohibited. The wife and the husband have equal rights over the land’ (Law no. 08/2005). This attention to gender issues matches similar earlier efforts by the current Rwandan government. Particularly interesting within the scope of this chapter is, for instance, the inheritance law adopted in 1999 that may be viewed as a first step towards recognizing women's rights of ownership by giving some of them5 the legal right to inherit property from their husband and/or father. Other initiatives include the ‘Gender Budget Initiative’, a three-year pilot project (2002–2004) aimed at introducing gender budgeting within different ministries (see Diop 2002). Furthermore, Rwanda has been showcased as one of the countries that excelled in drafting its Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) (see Zuckermann 2001), and it currently holds the world's largest percentage (45.3 per cent) of female parliamentarians (see UNDP 2005). Although one may applaud the Rwandan government for its seeming commitment towards gender issues in policy-making, in this chapter we advance a more balanced account of the gendersensitiveness of the newly-adopted land policy and law.