European Development Days, Brussels - Main contents
| date | June 3, 2015 - June 4, 2015 |
|---|---|
| city | Brussels, Belgium |
| location | Tour & Taxis, Avenue du Port - Havenlaan 86A, B1000 - Brussels, Belgium  |
| attending | L. (Laimdota) Straujuma i et al. |
| organisation | Latvian Presidency of the EU (Latvian presidency) i |
The current post-2015 process is a unique opportunity to highlight the role of gender equality in advancing development and making it sustainable. As stated by the Latvian Prime Minister Laimdota Straujuma, “gender is a stand-alone goal and a cross-cutting issue in the new development agenda and is one of the main priorities of the EU. As the Presidency of the Council of the EU, we have advocated that EU common positions strongly reflect the gender dimension” (for the full text of the interview please click here).
In order to bring forward the discussions on women and girls’ economic empowerment and share best practices among the different stakeholders, the Latvian Presidency is organising the European Development Days Lab Debate on Empowering Women and Girls in Central Asia: Stories from the Field on 4 June.
The aim of the lab is to share action-oriented recommendations on how to eliminate discrimination and violence against women thus removing the obstacles to women’s and girls’ economic empowerment. The debate will focus on Central Asia, a region that receives little attention from development donors, but is the priority region for Latvian development cooperation.
The panellists will speak about specific discriminatory traditions in local communities, stereotypes against women and specific restrictions in the labour market, and share their insight about some specific aspects of Latvia’s work in this region, including knowledge sharing. For more information on the Latvian projects in Central Asia, watch this video online.
Panellists:
-
-Mr Viktors Makarovs, Special Envoy of the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on development cooperation issues;
-
-Mrs Iluta Lace, Director of the Latvian NGO Marta Resource Centre for Women;
-
-Mrs Olga Nogaeva, International Project Manager at Milan Chamber of Commerce in Italy;
-
-Mrs Gulshod Sharipova, Representative of the NGO “MIR - Office for Initiative Development” from Tajikistan.
The debate will be moderated by Toms Rostoks, Associate Professor at the University of Latvia.
The Presidency will also be present at the opening session of the EDDs with an intervention by the Latvian Prime Minister Laimdota Straujuma at the Official Opening Ceremony (3 June, 11:30 - 12:30 Brussels time), which will also be broadcast live.