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Promoting female employment remains a pressing challenge in many low- and middle-income countries. Despite ongoing efforts, too few women participate in the labour force – particularly in regions such as the Middle East and South Asia – and too many remain locked out of more decent wage employment – especially in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Promoting women’s employment is not just about fairness; it is essential for inclusive and sustainable development. Women’s economic participation matters for four reasons: it fosters growth and reduces poverty by increasing household income, it enhances women’s autonomy in the household, it promotes equity and cohesion in societies, and it strengthens the resilience of households to shocks by diversifying income sources. Recent research has deepened under­standing of both the barriers and enablers of gender equality in labour markets, offering useful guidance for development cooperation.

Building on empirical research by IDOS, this policy brief highlights that development cooperation can take three key approaches to promote female employment:

• Address foundational barriers: Development cooperation can work with local partners to remove the root barriers holding women back. This includes addressing restrictive gender norms in ways that respect cultural contexts, e.g. by investing in community-based care solutions (as successfully practised in several African cases) or better access to services and mobility. Projects should not only target women individually but also address constraints within households and communities and engage broader society. They must also challenge gendered labour market structures that limit women’s paths into wage work.
• Strengthen gender equality on the opera­tional level: The green and digital transitions offer new employ­ment opportunities – but women risk being left behind. Development cooperation can help to ensure that women benefit from these shifts. In cooperation with national governments, it can embed gender targets into economic reforms, incentivise companies to adopt inclusive hiring practices and to implement flexible work time arrangements (such as in Jordan), and fund training for women to reskill and motivate them for these fields.
• Create an enabling policy mix: Employment-focused reforms succeed when they connect with broader policy frameworks. Aligning employment initiatives with social policies – such as childcare support or public works – can boost women’s ability to work. At the same time, gender-sensitive approaches in areas like transport, finance and infrastructure can help overcome structural disadvantages that affect women at different stages of life.

In recent years, development cooperation has shifted from measures to support gender mainstreaming towards gender-transformative approaches that aim to reduce structural barriers. Recent funding cuts and public opinion that is becoming more critical of diversity and equity measures, mean that development cooperation must build on its experience to enable women to grasp economic opportunities and live a dignified life.

 

Promoting female employment remains a pressing challenge in many low- and middle-income countries. Despite ongoing efforts, too few women participate in the labour force – particularly in regions such as the Middle East and South Asia – and too many remain locked out of more decent wage employment – especially in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Promoting women’s employment is not just about fairness; it is essential for inclusive and sustainable development. Women’s economic participation matters for four reasons: it fosters growth and reduces poverty by increasing household income, it enhances women’s autonomy in the household, it promotes equity and cohesion in societies, and it strengthens the resilience of households to shocks by diversifying income sources. Recent research has deepened under­standing of both the barriers and enablers of gender equality in labour markets, offering useful guidance for development cooperation.

Building on empirical research by IDOS, this policy brief highlights that development cooperation can take three key approaches to promote female employment:

• Address foundational barriers: Development cooperation can work with local partners to remove the root barriers holding women back. This includes addressing restrictive gender norms in ways that respect cultural contexts, e.g. by investing in community-based care solutions (as successfully practised in several African cases) or better access to services and mobility. Projects should not only target women individually but also address constraints within households and communities and engage broader society. They must also challenge gendered labour market structures that limit women’s paths into wage work.
• Strengthen gender equality on the opera­tional level: The green and digital transitions offer new employ­ment opportunities – but women risk being left behind. Development cooperation can help to ensure that women benefit from these shifts. In cooperation with national governments, it can embed gender targets into economic reforms, incentivise companies to adopt inclusive hiring practices and to implement flexible work time arrangements (such as in Jordan), and fund training for women to reskill and motivate them for these fields.
• Create an enabling policy mix: Employment-focused reforms succeed when they connect with broader policy frameworks. Aligning employment initiatives with social policies – such as childcare support or public works – can boost women’s ability to work. At the same time, gender-sensitive approaches in areas like transport, finance and infrastructure can help overcome structural disadvantages that affect women at different stages of life.

In recent years, development cooperation has shifted from measures to support gender mainstreaming towards gender-transformative approaches that aim to reduce structural barriers. Recent funding cuts and public opinion that is becoming more critical of diversity and equity measures, mean that development cooperation must build on its experience to enable women to grasp economic opportunities and live a dignified life.

 

Written by Sebastian Clapp and Martin Höflmayr with Falk Vambrie.

The European defence industry is highly fragmented, with limited collaborative investment and procurement, divergent national regulations, and protectionist tendencies that undermine efficiency, interoperability and competitiveness. The Letta report makes the case for a concerted effort to advance towards the development of a ‘Common Market for the Security and Defence Industry’, which focuses on regulatory simplification, pooled procurement, and cross-border industrial integration. While the Draghi report puts its finger on the EU defence sector’s fragmentation, under-investment, and external dependencies, it urges coordinated action to strengthen the industrial base, boost joint innovation, and align national efforts through common policies and incentives. According to the White Paper for European Defence, a truly integrated EU defence market would be among the largest globally, strengthening competitiveness, readiness and industrial scale. It would enable firms from the European defence technological and industrial base (EDTIB) to expand across the Union and stimulate cross-border cooperation, mergers and new ventures, increasing the availability of EU-made defence products.

The new Defence Readiness Omnibus aims to remove procedural bottlenecks and facilitate up to €800 billion in defence investment under the Rearm Europe/Readiness 2030 plan, combining streamlined procurement rules, simplified intra-EU transfers, and revised financial instruments. Achieving readiness and autonomy requires predictable joint planning, harmonised standards, and public-private coordination. Without genuine market reform, Europe’s rising defence spending risks being absorbed by inefficiencies rather than delivering real capability gains. A functioning common defence market is therefore essential not only for competitiveness, but also for deterrence, resilience and strategic sovereignty in an increasingly volatile geopolitical environment.

The European Parliament advocates a fully integrated internal market for defence to overcome fragmentation, urging regulatory reform, joint procurement, and cross-border industrial cooperation as essential steps towards greater efficiency, competitiveness, and strategic autonomy.

Read the complete briefing on ‘Building a common market for European defence‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.

EU members of NATO: Composition of defence spending

Rohingya refugees at a camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Credit: UNHCR/Susan Hopper

By Steve Ross
WASHINGTON DC, Sep 24 2025 (IPS)

Last month marked eight years since hundreds of thousands of Rohingya were forcibly displaced from Myanmar’s Rakhine State to Bangladesh by the Myanmar military.

On September 30, the UN General Assembly will convene a High-level Conference on the Situation of Rohingya Muslims and Other Minorities in Myanmar. The idea for the Conference was first floated by Bangladesh’s Chief Advisor, Mohammed Yunus, on the sidelines of last year’s General Assembly and was subsequently codified in December, with modalities adopted in March.

The conference aims to “propose a comprehensive, innovative, and concrete plan for a sustainable resolution of the crisis,” particularly through Rohingya returns to Myanmar.

But efforts to realize a political solution will be frustrated by the evolution of events on the ground. The Myanmar military seized power in a coup in 2021, plunging the country into chaos. The collapse in 2023 of a tentative ceasefire between the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army (AA), an ethnic Rakhine armed group, led to the AA’s seizure of much of Rakhine State.

Rohingya were caught between the conflicting parties and instrumentalized by both, particularly the military; counterintuitively, Rohingya armed groups fought alongside the military and against the AA and continue to clash with the AA along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border.

The humanitarian situation in Rakhine is now dire, with hundreds of thousands of Rakhine and Rohingya internally displaced, regular airstrikes, and a military blockade limiting humanitarian access and contributing to high levels of food insecurity.

Moreover, the AA stands accused of committing further atrocities against the Rohingya, charges it denies. Across the border in Bangladesh, Rohingya in the world’s largest refugee camps have been squeezed by 150,000 new arrivals from Rakhine since the beginning of last year and steep declines in humanitarian assistance, which may soon prompt cuts to food assistance and are already impacting access to informal education, health services, and cooking fuel.

The Rohingya Conference will bring necessary attention to the Rakhine crisis, provide a rare platform for some Rohingya voices to be represented at high-level discussions (on the heels of a broader such effort in Bangladesh last month), and may yield some much-needed support from donors, even if it is not intended as a pledging conference.

But a sustainable resolution to the crisis for now remains out of reach, particularly without cultivating a more robust, legitimate, and representative Rohingya civil society and deeper engagement with the powers that be in Rakhine.

Steve Ross is Senior Fellow, Crisis in Myanmar’s Rakhine State project, Stimson Center.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Le Conseil municipal de Tirana a voté mardi 23 septembre la destitution de son maire, Erion Veliaj, emprisonné depuis février dernier. Il a été « lâché » par son propre camp, le Parti socialiste. L'opposition dénonce une mise en scène politique.

- Le fil de l'Info / Courrier des Balkans, Albanie, PS Albanie, Politique

Le Conseil municipal de Tirana a voté mardi 23 septembre la destitution de son maire, Erion Veliaj, emprisonné depuis février dernier. Il a été « lâché » par son propre camp, le Parti socialiste. L'opposition dénonce une mise en scène politique.

- Le fil de l'Info / Courrier des Balkans, Albanie, PS Albanie, Politique

Le Collège des Bernardins invite le photographe Wandrille Potez à exposer douze vues de la vallée du Drino. Sise au sud de l'Albanie, elle abrite une constellation de monastères orthodoxes - trésors oubliés d'architecture byzantine et mémoire vivante de la minorité chrétienne. En attirant notre regard sur cette région mal connue des Balkans, les images nous disent l'urgence qu'il y a d'admirer, de protéger un paysage si rare et menacé.

- Agenda / Albanie, Région parisienne, Agenda - Diaporama

Le Collège des Bernardins invite le photographe Wandrille Potez à exposer douze vues de la vallée du Drino. Sise au sud de l'Albanie, elle abrite une constellation de monastères orthodoxes - trésors oubliés d'architecture byzantine et mémoire vivante de la minorité chrétienne. En attirant notre regard sur cette région mal connue des Balkans, les images nous disent l'urgence qu'il y a d'admirer, de protéger un paysage si rare et menacé.

- Agenda / Albanie, Région parisienne, Agenda - Diaporama

Brenda Biya, 27 ans, fille du président camerounais Paul Biya, a suscité une vive polémique après avoir appelé sur TikTok à ne pas voter pour son père lors de l'élection présidentielle du 12 octobre, avant de se rétracter quelques jours plus tard.

During their meeting on 24 and 25 September, SEDE Members will welcome Lieutenant General Stefano CONT, Director and Acting Deputy Chief Executive at the European Defence Agency, to discuss the next steps of the Coordinated Annual Review on Defence process (CARD) and how to further strengthen cooperation between Member States in capability development. Members will also have a debrief on the negotiations of the European Defence Industry Programme (EDIP) trilogue and
discuss 'in camera' the Russian escalation and violation of Polish airspace, the NATO's Article 4 consultations and the new operation Eastern Sentry, with Ambassador Jacek NAJDER, Permanent Representative of Poland to NATO and Ambassador Jüri LUIK, Permanent Representative of Estonia to NATO.
Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

Vital Kamerhe, président de l’Assemblée nationale de la République Démocratique du Congo, un allié du président Félix Tshisekedi a démissionné de son poste ce lundi après une pétition visant à le destituer.

La Médiatrice européenne Teresa Anjinho a ouvert mardi 23 septembre une enquête sur un échange de SMS entre la présidente de la Commission et le président français au sujet de l’accord commercial controversé conclu par l’UE avec les pays du Mercosur.

The post La Médiatrice européenne enquête sur les SMS échangés entre von der Leyen et Macron au sujet de l’accord UE-Mercosur appeared first on Euractiv FR.

Event Video 
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On September 23rd, IPI and the Government of Estonia, in partnership with the 1 for 8 Billion, the United Nations Association of the UK (UNA-UK), and CIVICUS, cohosted a public policy forum at the United Nations on the process of selecting the next UN secretary-general: the global diplomat and civil servant for the world’s peoples.

The event focused on recommendations to create a more transparent, inclusive, and equitable selection process for the position of UN secretary-general and ideas for how different sectors can work collaboratively to encourage and ensure the realization of this goal. The discussion also explored the increasing role of the General Assembly in the secretary-general’s election process. The event highlighted how this critical appointment can be a transformative and reinvigorating opportunity for the UN and for multilateralism as the world faces intersecting and accelerating global challenges.

Speakers:
H.E. Arnoldo André Tinoco, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Costa Rica
H.E. Jeppe Tranholm-Mikkelsen, Permanent Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of Denmark
H.E. Oana-Silvia Țoiu, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Romania
H.E. Gro Harlem Brundtland, Member of The Elders; former Prime Minister of Norway and Director-General of the WHO
Maria Noel Leoni, Representative of the 1 for 8 Billion Campaign; Co-founder and Campaign Director of GQUAL; and Deputy Executive Director for the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL)
Thant Myint-U, Visiting Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge; the Chairman of U Thant House; Founder and Chairman of the Yangon Heritage Trust; and author of the book, Peacemaker: U Thant and the Forgotten Quest for a Just World

Closing Remarks:
H.E. Alar Karis, President of Estonia

Moderator:
Jeffrey Feltman, Non-Resident Adviser, International Peace Institute

The post A New Vision for Global Leadership: Selecting the Next UN Secretary-General appeared first on International Peace Institute.

Dauer des Videos : 75'

Haftungsausschluss : Die Verdolmetschung der Debatten soll die Kommunikation erleichtern, sie stellt jedoch keine authentische Aufzeichnung der Debatten dar. Authentisch sind nur die Originalfassungen der Reden bzw. ihre überprüften schriftlichen Übersetzungen.
Quelle : © Europäische Union, 2025 - EP

Discover the nominees for the European Parliament’s 2025 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

Source : © European Union, 2025 - EP

Le Conseil des ministres espagnol a approuvé mardi 23 septembre un décret-loi très attendu interdisant définitivement l’achat et la vente d’armes, de technologies à double usage et d’équipements militaires à Israël.

The post L’Espagne officialise l’embargo total sur les armes à destination d’Israël appeared first on Euractiv FR.

Dauer des Videos : 60'

Haftungsausschluss : Die Verdolmetschung der Debatten soll die Kommunikation erleichtern, sie stellt jedoch keine authentische Aufzeichnung der Debatten dar. Authentisch sind nur die Originalfassungen der Reden bzw. ihre überprüften schriftlichen Übersetzungen.
Quelle : © Europäische Union, 2025 - EP

Kairo untergrabe genau die Organisation, deren Führung es anstrebt, sagt ein griechischer Europaabgeordneter

Après vingt-cinq ans d’efforts pour réduire sa dépendance aux combustibles fossiles, l’Allemagne se retrouve à un moment charnière de sa transition énergétique. Berlin doit décider s’il faut continuer à accorder de généreuses subventions aux énergies renouvelables ou bien revoir un système que certains jugent responsable de la perte de compétitivité industrielle du pays.

The post Transition énergétique : l’Allemagne à la croisée des chemins appeared first on Euractiv FR.

A múlt héten csütörtökön legalább 500 000 ember vonult az utcára egy nagy szakszervezeti akció keretében – miközben a miniszterelnök ----> tovább olvasok!

The post Csak a szokásos: tüntetés, sztrájk, a kormány nehéz helyzetben appeared first on FRANCIA POLITIKA.