To reverse this trend, Women in Europe for a Common Future, together with over 600 women’s civil society organizations from 100 countries, is working to ensure that women’s equality is an integral part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and, in particular, that Goal 5 – which focuses on gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls – is achieved.

The United States has been the largest individual donor to mine action in Angola making it the third largest recipient of U.S. mine action support in the world -- totaling more than $110 million since 1993. Our extensive efforts have saved thousands of lives through the clearance of roads, contaminated land, and allowed for the safe return of families displaced by conflict.

To be sure, these problems are difficult to resolve. The issue of refugees and displaced peoples is one of the great tests of the international humanitarian ideals of the 21st century, and of the cosmopolitan aspirations of a Europe shaped by ambition to project its soft power and good governance across the world. However, when cosmopolitanism meets state interests under economic pressure, the former is often cast aside. 

Prime Minister David Cameron has promised that the UK will accept up to 20,000 more Syrian refugeesby 2020. To help fund this, Chancellor George Osborne says that money should be used from the foreign aid budget to provide support for local councils. He said there should be a "fundamental rethink" of how the aid budget is used.

Activists in Afghanistan have called on international donors not to neglect women’s rights when they meet with the government in Kabul this weekend to reaffirm their commitments to peace and development.

The Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs, Adel Al-Jubeir, spoke recently at a press conference in Berlin on the case of Raef Badawi, a Saudi blogger who has been sentenced to ten years in jail for creating a website that promotes liberal discussion. Badawi’s case, said Al-Jubeir, is an internal issue for Saudi Arabia, who will not accept any outside interference in its judiciary and internal affairs.

In the past few years, Turkey has taken upwards of two million Syrian refugees into the country and provided large quantities of aid to them as well. Aid to Syrian refugees has increased the overall humanitarian aid Turkey gives each year and this spending is seemingly aimed at increasing Turkey’s soft power internationally, and regionally with the Middle East. Often we in Turkey hear ideas from major media outlets about supporting the Middle East based on shared culture and religion, or a shared historical Ottoman legacy.

Zineb Benalla, director of the Transnational Initiative Countering Violent Extremism, heads up the independent think tank — established in April 2015 in Casablanca, Morocco, to counter violent extremism and build peace — and spearheaded the effort to introduce education-based projects for youth resilience to violent extremism in Timbuktu, a city in the West African nation of Mali as well as Gao, located on the River Niger.