ABSTRACT
Women's land issues found themselves within a wider context of land disputes that have fuelled Rwandan's conflicts. Women's access to land, which was highly curtailed, depended on their marital status and was mediated by men. Although the new law supports changes in women's land rights, the process leading up to its enactment was, from a gender perspective, seriously flawed. As a result, land rights were framed as the right to access property in general, despite the fact that women's rights and the genocide were both pertinent issues. These omissions mirrored the Gender Ministry's initial claim that land was not a women's issue but a Rwandan issue when it was approached by LandNet. The latter is a transnational network focusing on land issues. Indeed, the bulk of women's organizations did not conceptualize land rights as women's rights, with a similar logic to the Ministry's.
