The EU is per se, not an obstacle to the empowerment of migrant women and especially not deliberately so. On the contrary, EU and UN initiatives, such as UNIFEM and UN women, function as an...Show moreThe EU is per se, not an obstacle to the empowerment of migrant women and especially not deliberately so. On the contrary, EU and UN initiatives, such as UNIFEM and UN women, function as an instrument in which women can claim their rights. However, there are shortcomings in the current legal framework regarding women in migration that can and ought to be improved. First, the contextual and relational nature of gender-based discrimination remains unacknowledged. Second, treating all migrant women as universally vulnerable leads to the marginalization of the subgroup. Third, the EU guidelines are non-binary and do therefore not ensure gender equal treatment and furthermore gender is only an addition to the existing legal framework, which treats women as ‘exceptional’ and not as a part of the main assumption. Fourth, the EU lacks empowering instruments for migrant women. These challenges must be addressed if the EU wishes to fulfill its normative role of ensuring gender equality in migration.Show less
Coffee is one of the most traded commodities in the World and accounts for around 36.5 Billion US dollars’ worth of trade, according to the UN (2017, 180). It is a widely democratized beverage in...Show moreCoffee is one of the most traded commodities in the World and accounts for around 36.5 Billion US dollars’ worth of trade, according to the UN (2017, 180). It is a widely democratized beverage in western societies nowadays, with the largest importers in the World being the EU and the US. How can coffee trade contribute to both the development of the Latin American countries and the empowerment of its small producers? The aim of this paper is to provide practical solutions that can be implemented to empower the producers, at each of the stages of the coffee supply chain. Within the framework of the New Rural Development paradigm, this paper finds that producing countries should help the individual producers by providing an enabling environment for better producing conditions and should coordinate with other producing countries to, again, strengthen their negotiating power vis-à-vis developed consuming countries. The consuming countries, in turn, should not hinder the development of the producing countries with discriminatory import tariffs and should instead provide the legal and executive framework allowing producing countries to develop themselves. Finally, individual consumers should voice their support for better living conditions for the coffee producers by buying products from sustainable supply chains.Show less
