The World Bank announced today four projects in the Palestinian territories aimed at improving living conditions and expanding opportunities. The projects will be funded by grants totaling of US$ 43 million, and will support of job creation, recovery and reconstruction, service delivery, and social protection of the most vulnerable.

JERUSALEM, April 26, 2017 – Foreign aid and investment alone will have limited impact on the Palestinian economy without significant changes on the ground, according to a new World Bank report. A paradigm shift is needed among all parties to break the vicious cycle of near-stagnant economic growth and ongoing political uncertainty – and this could allow foreign aid to have a much more catalytic impact.

International Women’s Day Message by UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka on International Women's Day, 8 March 2017 Date: 8 February 2017 Across the world, too many women and girls spend too many hours on household responsibilities—typically more than double the time spent by men and boys. They look after younger siblings, older family members, deal with illness in the family and manage the house. In many cases this unequal division of labour is at the expense of women’s and girls’ learning, of paid work, sports, or engagement in civic or community leadership. This shapes the norms of relative disadvantage and advantage, of where women and men are positioned in the economy, of what they are skilled to do and where they will work. This is the unchanging world of unrewarded work, a globally familiar scene of withered futures, where girls and their mothers sustain the family with free labour, with lives whose trajectories are very different from the men of the household.