Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – The election of Sahle-Work Zewde as Ethiopia‘s first female president has been enthusiastically greeted in Ethiopia and beyond, raising hopes among advocates for gender equality in the conservative country.

The 68-year-old was unanimously approved by the Ethiopian parliament on Thursday to replace Mulatu Teshome, who resigned unexpectedly a day earlier.

While the position of president is largely ceremonial, it carries important symbolic weight and social influence.

Following Zewde’s appointment, congratulatory messages arrived from the African Union (AU), the United Nations and the European Union, as well as other international organisations and leaders around the world.

Experienced diplomat

The softly-spoken, veteran technocrat has worked in diplomacy for more than three decades.

Born in the capital Addis Ababa, Zewde attended university in France. After graduating, she served as Ethiopia’s ambassador to France, Djibouti, Senegal and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a regional trade bloc in East Africa.

Prior to her appointment as president, she was the UN’s top official at the AU. She is fluent in English and French as well as Amharic, Ethiopia’s official working language.

Abebe Aynete, a senior researcher at the Ethiopian Foreign Relations Strategic Studies think tank, said Zewde’s experience will make her a competent spokesperson for the country’s political reforms on the international stage.

“As a person who knows the Ethiopian system inside out, Zewde, as president, will offer more continuity in terms of policy but will have her own priorities, including female empowerment,” Aynete told Al Jazeera.

“The fact that Zewde has become the first female Ethiopian president will be a great sign towards achieving gender equality. I consider it as a sort of a glass ceiling being broken down, showing females can also reach positions of high profile,” said Aynete.

‘Positive first step’

Zewde’s appointment to the presidency is not an isolated phenomenon.

The administration of reformist Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, which assumed office in April, has appointed numerous women to influential positions that have been traditionally reserved for men.

Earlier this month, Abiy filled half of his cabinet with women, including Ethiopia’s first female Defence Minister Aisha Mohammed.

Muferiat Kamil was appointed to lead the newly-created Ministry of Peace, responsible for the police and domestic intelligence agencies.

“If the current change in Ethiopia is headed equally by both men and women, it can sustain its momentum and realise a prosperous Ethiopia free of religious, ethnic and gender discrimination,” Zewde said in a speech in parliament on Thursday.

Aklile Solomon, a female rights activist based in Addis Ababa,welcomed Zewde’s appointment but cautioned that there is more work to be done.

“There is still much to be desired in gender equality, despite the recent moves for gender proportionality in Ethiopian politics,” said Solomon.

Solomon, co-founder of the gender equality-focused Yellow Movement, said the country needs tougher legislation against gender-based violence, as well as policies to encourage female empowerment from the local level to the highest federal office.

“While I consider Zewde’s appointment a positive first step, Ethiopia has a history of female government ministers, which in practice have done little to advance female rights and equality,” she said.

Solomon also said Abiy had yet to speak to women’s rights activists and urged him to open a dialogue with groups focused on gender equality.

Optimism on social media

Ethiopian social media has been flooded with positivity over Zewde’s appointment.

Tsedale Lemma, editor of web magazine Addis Standard, was effusive in her praise.

“In Zewde, what I saw is a woman who consciously decided to humble herself to serve the country she loves; she called it an honour! We can, for once, consider this a decision she and only she had the last say about and accept a role that we often mistake as mere ceremonial,” she said on Twitter.

Zewde’s appointment makes her the only female head of state in Africa currently.

A handful of African countries have in the recent past been led by female presidents with executive powers, including Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Liberia (2006-18) and Joyce Banda in Malawi (2012-2014).

Zewde herself has noticed the optimism her appointment has created among Ethiopian women.

At her swearing-in ceremony in parliament, she said she planned to raise the issue of female empowerment non-stop over her six-year term.

“I know today I have said a lot about female empowerment, but expect me to be even more vocal in the coming years about female rights and equality,” Zewde said.

Premiership Rugby will not bring its play-off final in 2021 forward to allow the British & Irish Lions to train for a week before flying out to South Africa, but its chief executive, Mark McCafferty, says English clubs were not trying to squeeze the tourists out of the fixture schedule.

Future Lions tours will be cut from 10 to eight matches and without a training week for the entire squad, they will have little time to blend players from four countries. John Spencer, the manager to New Zealand last year, has said he is concerned about the future of European rugby’s leading brand because the tight schedule would turn a tour into a mission impossible.

“The Lions will always be part of the rugby schedule, for sure,” said McCafferty. “It is a question of trying to help them and we have been trying to do that. We want them to engage more fully with the clubs and not just see themselves as partners of the unions. That is not easy, sometimes, but is definitely the way forward.

“There is no way that the Lions will never form part of the system, but there has to be sufficient preparation in advance of a tour. We had a ridiculous situation a few years ago when players appearing in the European Cup final that weekend were dragged away on the Monday to a Lions do. It led to a conflict and the day before the Lions left for Hong Kong in 2013, we were resolving an issue over insurance.”

A number of club officials said after last year’s tour that the length of a Lions tour had to be cut in the interests of player welfare, threatening to withhold their players if the schedules were not curtailed. They also wanted a hike in the £60,000 they received for each player.

“It is not all one-way,” said McCafferty. “We need to become more empathetic in some areas. It is a complex issue and people have strong views about it, but I am confident that we will move on and that things will improve.”

The Premiership season in 2020‑21 will be played over 10 months, from 12 September until 26 June, the date of the final at Twickenham. The campaign will be 17 days longer than the current one, but the slack will be used to reduce the number of overlaps between league and international fixtures rather than accommodate the Lions.

“Is it possible to see a time where there are no overlaps? Yes, but it would require changing competition formats and we are not ready for that,” said McCafferty. “What we are seeing in all this is that the game is continuing to evolve.”

A four-way summit on Syria has ended with no major breakthrough, even as the leaders of Turkey, Russia, Germany and France agreed that a fragile ceasefire in Idlib should be preserved and said a committee tasked with drafting the war-torn country’s new constitution needs to convene by the end of the year.

Saturday’s meeting in Istanbul was aimed at laying the groundwork for an eventual peace plan in a country devastated by more than seven years of war.

In a joint communique following their meeting, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and Russian President  Vladimir Putin called for “an inclusive, Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political process” and said conditions needed to be created for the safe and voluntary return of refugees.

The summit, which was not attended by any Syrian groups, was the first to bring the four leaders together.

Erdogan said the constitutional committee, which was first agreed upon in January during Russian-sponsored talks at the Black Sea resort of Sochi needed to convene “as soon as possible”.

However, efforts to bring Syria’s warring factions together to draft a new constitution under which elections would be held have stalled, with the committee failing to meet even once.

Syria’s major opposition groups had boycotted the Sochi event, officially known as Syrian Congress of National Dialogue, and rejected the constitutional plan. The fate of President Bashar al-Assad, a major sticking point that has repeatedly caused negotiations to fail, had not been mentioned in the final statement of the Sochi summit.

“The people of Syria will determine the future of President Bashar al-Assad,” said Erdogan, whose administration backs certain rebel groups in Idlib.

“As far as we are concerned, Assad is someone who has killed nearly one million of his citizens. He is not someone who we hold in high esteem. Massacres continue as before, but it is our wish that this process comes to an end and the people of Syria can begin to live their lives again.”

Since the beginning of the Syrian uprising, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed and over 12 million people – half the country’s prewar population – have been displaced.

Erdogan said while Turkey had welcomed more than three million Syrian refugees, “they should be allowed to return to Syria, and this should be done in a voluntary fashion.

“With the cooperation of the United Nations, this can and should be done,” he said.

Putin: Demilitarised zone is temporary measure

Also discussed at the summit was a demilitarised zone around the densely-populated Idlib province, a Turkish- and Russian- backed initiative aimed at preventing a large-scale military assault on the last rebel enclave in Syria.

Putin, a major backer of Assad, called the 15-20km zone “a temporary measure”, adding that he hoped “the Turkish government will ensure, in the near future, the complete withdrawal of the [armed] opposition from the zone and heavy artillery”.

On Friday, Syria’s UN envoy Bashar al-Jaafari also called that the buffer zone “temporary”, adding that Idlib would eventually revert to government control.

An estimated three million Syrians live in Idlib, half of them already displaced from cities and towns under state control.

Putin added that Moscow reserved the right to help Damascus “eliminate terrorists” in Idlib in the event of any provocations.

According to an agreement brokered between Ankara and Moscow last month, opposition groups are to remain in areas where they are already present in Idlib, while Russian and Turkish forces will carry out joint patrols in the area with a view to preventing a resumption of fighting.

For her part, Merkel renewed a call for elections and said “all Syrians must be allowed to decide the country’s future, in free, transparent elections which must be supervised internationally”.

Meanwhile, Macron called on Russia to exercise “very clear pressure” on Damascus “which depends on it for survival”.

A final statement from the four leaders also rejected “separatist agendas aimed at undermining the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria as well as the national security of neighboring countries”.

Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr, reporting from Istanbul, said “there was little consensus” among the Istanbul summit attendees, adding that “the differences of opinion were out in the open”.

“France attended the Istanbul summit because they wanted to get a guarantee and a commitment from Turkey and Russia that the Idlib deal to create a demilitarised zone will become a lasting ceasefire.

“But we know is that Russia and Turkey wanted a commitment from Europe to help pay with the reconstruction of Syria – and Russia and Turkey did not get that from the Europeans.”

“So, the different players are still so far apart and yet we heard all of them say there is a need to get other players on board.”

‘Vote of no-confidence to the US’

Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East studies at the University of Oklahoma, described the Istanbul summit as “a big departure” from the United Nations-backed Geneva process and “a vote of no-confidence to the US”.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, he said “the big gain” for Erdogan is getting “Europe involved into the Astana process”, referring to a separate diplomatic track led by Turkey, Russia and Iran in Kazakhstan’s capital.

“Erdogan wants to counterbalance Russia with some German and French muscle to stabilise the Idlib situation and make sure that Russia and Syria don’t invade and drive all these rebels and jihadists into Turkey, as well many more Syrian refugees which would be a disaster for Turkey and very bad for Europe.”

Commenting on the talk about constitutional reform and “free and fair elections”, Landis said “that is not going to happen”.

“Assad won this war and of course this is a fig leave being brought by Europe – and of course the US behind it – and Turkey, saying that somehow we are going to get the opposition in power in Damascus,” Landis said.

“Assad fought this war brutally in order to stop that and Russia sided with him. I don’t think that these peace negotiations are going to end up winning the war that the militaries could not do in the country.

“But there are many issues, including what is going to happen to all those rebel fighters in Idlib? Are they going to be destroyed and arrested or are they going to own a country, a little enclave, protected by Turkey and Europe?”