CO-508412 Within Laos’ minority ethnic communities, cultural and social norms as well as traditional laws and customs often inhibit women andgirls from taking up leadership roles or making choices about their own futures and livelihoods. For example, in Hmong communities in Xaysomboun province, where the proposed project will continue supporting the saving group, marriages are often polygamous and early marriage (age 14/15) is common. Traditional customs prevent women from becoming local leaders or leaving the community without their husbands. Domestic work is highly gendered, with women and girls disproportionately responsible for unpaid household chores and childcare.

Lao PDR’s economic impacts still linger and these have been further exacerbated by multiplecrises, including the impactsof COVID-19 outbreak, climate change, supply chain disruptions and geo-political tensions and conflict. Such uncertainties have contributed to rising inflation, reaching a 23 year high in 2023, such shocks are greatly impacting the cost of living and livelihoods of many people particularly the rural poor. The 2022 report from Statistics Bureau under the Lao Ministry of Planning and Investing indicated highly increased cost of food, transportation, healthcare products and medicine and fuel. Similarly, vulnerable rural households in Laos have been impacted due to prices rise in agriculture inputs, e.g., fertilizer and fuel (UN Report, 2022) to afford, resulting in low farm productivity and food security of rural population, consisting of 64% of the total population who depend on agriculture for their livelihood  . The report continued that women and girls are more vulnerable to economic shocks due to their limited access to income resources, education and skills development, and health services, including services related to reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health. Women and girls are exposed to more domestic violence and harmful practices during economic stagnation. The project team found out that each target village has produced their own local products; however, the quality isstill limited, resulting in low selling. Villagers’ capacity and skills to produce good quality products is low.

In addition, the GIZ 2014 fact sheet showed that temperatures inLaos would continue to rise and that dry seasons would get longer. Rainfall, storms, droughts, and floods would become more severe and frequent. Rainfall would become more erratic and weather events such as droughts or floods would become more extreme. InApril 2023, the temperature in Vientiane reached 39 degrees Celsius. Laos people in some communities still practice slashing and burning farming, which has huge negative impacts on the environment. Uncontrolled forest fires inLaos also cause a lot of problem to the livelihood of the communities. Recently (April 2023) it was believed that farmer practice of slashing and burning has caused large forest fires in Laos affecting at least 300 hectares of lands . Flood and draught are commondisasters in Laos,which has affected people, especially those living in the remote areas and along the Mekong River.

The chronically cultural and social norm challenges have made women in Laos face a lot of difficulties for many decades, let alone the additionalexternaleconomic and climate change effects. These two factors mentioned above will make women and girls in Laos even more vulnerable. Therefore, there is an urgent need for activities that continue to support the most vulnerable women and their communities toimprove economic conditions. As Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) is heart to build women’s ability to reduce poverty, the project will improve WEE through three key approaches: i) improving women’s economic development; ii) increasing their agricultural skills to cope with the negative impacts from climate change; and iii) strengthening their capacity to improvise the quality of their local products to meet the current market for better income generation.