Associate Michele Discepola, a member of Shearman & Sterling's Project Finance & Development team in Abu Dhabi, recently returned from a month-long pro bono assignment in Rwanda. We asked Michele to share a first-person account of the experience. Read on to learn more about this project.

In early May of this year, lawyers in the Asia offices received an e-mail requesting volunteers for two pro bono assignments in Africa. Having previously enjoyed traveling to various countries in Africa, I immediately sent a reply that I was interested without having even read the entire e-mail. Once I pressed the “send” button, I proceeded to read what the assignments entailed: the first one was working in Arusha, Tanzania, for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and the second was working with Lawyers Without Borders in collaboration with an organization in Rwanda called Rwanda Women’s Network (RWN). “Fantastic,” I thought, “What an amazing opportunity this will be if I’m chosen.” A few days later, having been lucky enough to be selected for the assignment in Rwanda, I was at the doctor’s office getting a prescription for malaria pills, and then on my way to Africa.

Reading Up on Rwanda

Prior to leaving for Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, I read as much as I could about the country. I also read up on RWN, and the project I was going to be involved with. RWN is a humanitarian-focused non-governmental organization (NGO) based in Kigali dedicated to the promotion and improvement of the socio-economic welfare of women in Rwanda. RWN believes that women’s basic rights include the ability to claim legal title to land and the ability to have access to the court system in order to defend one’s legal title.

Prior to 2003, customary law in Rwanda governed land ownership, especially in rural parts of the country, and customary law provided that only men could own land. However, the government had over the past few years enacted legislation giving women the right to own land, and explicitly stated that such rights superseded any customary law. The problem lay in the fact that most women in Rwanda are uneducated and continue to believe that they are not entitled to own land. My assignment was to assist RWN in analyzing the legal system in Rwanda to determine how accessible the court system was for women interested in enforcing their newly acquired rights to own land.

Finding a Sample

In order to analyze the Rwandan court system, we needed to interview a random sample of the female population in the town of Nyamata (just outside of Kigali) where the population is roughly 55,000, of which 55% are women. We were able to obtain a list of the names of all of the women in Nyamata; however, we were not sure of how best to generate a "random" sample, nor did we know the minimum number of women we would need to interview in order for the study to be considered a statistically accurate assessment of the overall female population of Nyamata. The financial donor of the study wanted a sample of 10% of the female population, but given the complexities involved in trying to access women in rural areas of Rwanda, as well as our time constraints, we didn’t think that interviewing 3,000 women (10% of 30,000) would be achievable, nor did we believe that this was essential in order to obtain an accurate assessment of the overall female population of Nyamata.

Determining how certain women had obtained knowledge that the newly enacted laws overruled customary law and that they were now legally entitled to own land would allow us to further understand how best to educate other women about their rights. We were also interested in knowing what barriers (such as intimidation by men) prevented certain women from accessing the legal system. Once we determined the proper sample size, I, along with RWN volunteers, proceeded to interview a random sample of women. In order to gather data which we could later analyze, we interviewed some women who had accessed the legal system to enforce their land rights, and others who had not been able to access the legal system.

The data gathering process continued after I left Rwanda in mid-June, and is almost complete. Once all of the data is gathered, the next steps will be to analyze it and determine what gaps in the legal system need to be addressed in order to provide women in Rwanda with better protection against any barriers they have experienced, and better access to the court systems.

A Rewarding Experience

Overall, my experience working with RWN and spending a month in Kigali was rewarding. I was further convinced that a legal system which includes properly documented and enforceable land rights is imperative for the promotion of equality and economic development for women, given that women can use the land they legally own as collateral, which in turn could help them access credit. In addition, I met many different locals as well as foreigners and got to understand a bit more about what drives the very proud people of Rwanda to move forward after the country’s 1994 genocide.