One of SALC’s partners, Mamoletsi Moletsi, recently published an opinion piece in Lesotho’s Public Eyereflecting on the importance of ensuring women’s equality if we are to effectively respond to HIV. In the piece she points to the recent Botswana High Court decision in Mmusi and Others v Ramantele and Another, a case in which SALC was involved to argue that “countries [need to] reform property and inheritance laws to ensure that women and men have equal access to property and inheritance.”
She further points to the current case before the Lesotho Constitutional Court challenging a woman’s right to succeed to chieftainship, a case in which SALC intervened as amicus, noting that the court “is currently facing whether to entrench inequality by letting a law that denies women the right to succeed to chieftainship or whether to follow in the footsteps of the Botswana High Court and reject such inequality.” She ends by arguing that “[s]triking down these types of laws and reinforcing the importance of equality between men and women is critical if we, in Lesotho, are to end the HIV epidemic and ensure equal rights for women.”
