Meeting with Maasai traditional birth attendants. Photo: Bernard Paul Muyanda. ACORD
Pastoralist women in many parts of Africa, including Northeast Africa and Nigeria, face many cultural practices which increase their vulnerability to HIV. At the current International AIDS Conference in Durban, despite it taking place on the same continent, there are no sessions or abstracts listed in relation to pastoralists at all. I would love to be there to raise awareness of pastoralist women’s rights myself, but with no funds available to travel, register or stay there, I am glad to be able to write about some of the issues they face here.
In Tanzania, the Maasai, Sonjo, Hadzabe and Mang’ati people number about 170,000, 51% of whom are female, living across 14,000 km. Whilst seeking to preserve their culture despite modern world pressures, they still embrace a system that denies most women and girls basic human rights. Lack of inheritance rights leave widows and their children very vulnerable when a man dies. In addition, pastoralist women lack access to political power or representation and frequently have development policies imposed upon them.
