Submitted by: Widows for Peace through Democracy

The National Council of Women calls upon Her Majesty’s Government, and in particular the Department for International Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office: (a) 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 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 and also SCR 1820 and the Millennium Development Goals.