DAI to Present at European Development Days 2018

May 29, 2018

DAI is pleased to take part in two panel discussions at European Development Days on June 5 and 6 in Brussels.

Now in its 12th year, European Development Days is Europe’s leading forum on international cooperation and development, bringing together international development professionals, world leaders, and key opinion makers. The event is hosted by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development (DEVCO) and is expected to attract more than 8,000 participants from 140 countries and 1,200 organisations. With this year’s theme of #SheisWe, the event will focus on gender equality and the empowerment and engagement of women and girls in sustainable development.

Yolanda Gibb, Director of the Societal Innovation and Enterprise Forum and Associate at WISE Development­, will represent DAI at a panel on gender-responsive budgeting. She will focus on gender-responsive budgeting as an instrument for change and the need to integrate this approach into the policy-making process. Yolanda will discuss DAI’s work on a gender-responsive budgeting manual produced for the Jordan Fiscal Reform project and a toolkit on fostering a gender-sensitive investment climate developed for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in Tajikistan. She will also highlight other DAI-led projects that promote women’s economic empowerment and gender equality, including a land reform project in Malawi, the Arab Women’s Enterprise Fund in Egypt, Jordan, and Palestine, and the EU’s Trade and Private Sector Development (TPSD) Facility. The panel will take place on June 6.

As part of our work for the TPSD Facility, DAI produced a video that will be featured during the panel “Towards a Sustainable Garment Sector: Ethical is fabulous” on June 5. With 150 million people working in the garment industry globally, the video discusses how the EU’s External Investment Plan (EIP) works to benefit local entrepreneurs in garment value chains by attracting new investments and promoting a conducive investment climate in sub-Saharan Africa and EU Neighbourhood countries. The video and the panel discussion will touch on how the EIP ensures that investments adhere to social and environmental standards and the EU’s efforts to improve the transparency and sustainability of value chains, including garment production.

Marjeta Jager, Deputy Director General of DEVCO and Head of the EIP Secretariat, will introduce the video. It is the first in a series of “EIP Stories” that will explain the EU’s plan to catalyse private-sector investment in partner countries.

To learn more about the event, visit www.eudevdays.eu or follow @EuropeAid, #EDD18, #SheisWe, and #ShEDDs on Twitter. DAI will live tweet our panels from @DAIGlobal.