Featured Changemaker
Rael Akware
Kenya
The Kenyan feminist and climate activist Rael Akware (she/her) advocates for marginalized ethnic minority women and girls through public interest litigation and legal aid. She is passionate about amplifying women and girls' voices and compelling Government to address historical land rights injustices.
In her words
Our relationships as women to land, property, water and natural resources are not gender neutral, and our rights to these resources are gender biased.Rael AkwareWomen Beyond Barriers program officer for legal and climate justice
We feminize our planet by calling it “mother earth” – but land as a feminist issue goes beyond metaphor. Women and girls are more than half of rural poor who eke out an existence on less than $1 a day, and their prospects of breaking the yoke of poverty are bleaker than those of their male counterparts.Rael AkwareWomen Beyond Barriers program officer for legal and climate justice
Laws, social norms and structural discrimination impose barriers to women’s rights and access to land. The majority of the world’s poor women depend on land for food, shelter, livelihood, and often their identity, but lack legal control over this source of their survival.Rael AkwareWomen Beyond Barriers program officer for legal and climate justice
Land management and control of proceeds from the land continues to be seen as male territory because lower literacy rates for ethic minority women mean lower awareness of rights and the avenues for asserting and claiming their rights. This is what we must change.Rael AkwareWomen Beyond Barriers program officer for legal and climate justice
Climate justice means...
Climate justice means finding solutions to the climate crisis that not only reduce emissions or protect the natural world, but that do so in a way which creates a fairer, more just and more equal world in the process. Land rights offer a path to a restored planet and a secure future for all.