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Improving the gender-responsiveness of design and delivery of rural finance interventions through innovative approaches and mechanisms is important for promoting rural women’s economic empowerment. This document highlights practical and actionable approaches from the sector in order to guide the work of practitioners engaging at country level to pursue the above objective. Part I of this Technical Guidance Note provides an overview of the main barriers and constraints that inhibit rural women’s financial inclusion. Part II offers a step-by-step approach to analysing the state of gender equality within a specific country or context, with the purpose of diagnosing potential entry points [...]

These Guidelines include step-by-step guidance to formulate qualitative and quantitative indicators of gender transformative change to help gender experts and food security, agriculture and nutrition programme specialists in their efforts to design, implement, monitor and evaluate gender transformative interventions. These indicators should be distinctive from and a complement to other reach, benefit and empower indicators intended to contribute to gender equality outcomes in food security, nutrition and sustainable agriculture. The Guidelines also present an overarching framework for measuring gender transformative change in the context of food and nutrition security and sustainable agriculture, including key dimensions and a socio-ecological model for identifying [...]

Tenure rights are crucial to the livelihoods of people as they define who can use which natural resources, for how long, and under which conditions. Tenure of natural resources is also essential for environmental sustainability and increased resilience and for enabling farmers to access other services. As the world population continues to grow and climate change reduces the availability of natural resources, increasing conflicts over land, and land deterioration are negatively affecting rural livelihoods on an unprecedented scale. In particular, women often have much weaker tenure rights than men, and they suffer discrimination by social customs, as well as by [...]

En 2022, dans le cadre du projet «Efficacité, productivité et durabilité de l’eau dans la région du Proche-Orient et de l’Afrique du Nord», l’Organisation des Nations Unies pour l’alimentation et l’agriculture (FAO) a appuyé le Gouvernement tunisien dans l’analyse de la comptabilité de l’eau en combinaison avec l’analyse de la gouvernance de l’eau dans la basse vallée de la Medjerda (BVM). La BVM a été retenue pour son importance capitale dans le système hydraulique du nord du pays. En effet, la Medjerda, principal fleuve du pays, représente l’essentiel des réserves nationales en eau de surface, irrigue 80 000 hectares de terres [...]

The status of women in agrifood systems report uses extensive new data and analyses to provide a comprehensive picture of women’s participation, benefits, and challenges they face working in agrifood systems globally. The report shows how increasing women’s empowerment and gender equality in agrifood systems enhances women’s well-being and the well-being of their households, creating opportunities for economic growth, greater incomes, productivity and resilience. The report comes more than a decade after the publication of the State of food and agriculture (SOFA) 2010–11: Women in agriculture – Closing the gender gap for development. SOFA 2010–11 documented the tremendous costs of gender [...]

In an effort to assist the Iraqi Government in addressing the challenges currently faced by the displaced farming population in their return to farming, the International Organization on Migration (IOM) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have agreed to collaborate on a joint study to identify the needs of the displaced population and strategies for restarting agricultural production in conflict-affected rural areas. The study aims to 1) identify the role that agriculture plays as a source of livelihood for internally displaced persons (IDPs) and returnees; 2) understand the drivers, constraints and challenges confronted by displaced and [...]

The analysis presented in this report examines the impacts of repurposing food and agricultural fiscal support and border support on the cost and affordability of healthy diets and several other key socioeconomic, nutritional and climate indicators. The impacts are estimated at the global level, as well as for various income groups and geographic regions. Scenarios include repurposing fiscal support to producer support targeted to high-priority foods (those where current levels of consumption are below that of recommended levels) and to consumer subsidies targeting high-priority foods.

Extending the coverage of social insurance schemes to rural areas of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is challenging because of high administrative costs and a lack of necessary capacity. As a result agriculture workers tend to be left out of these schemes. This research report aims to understand the main administrative barriers and capacity constraints that may hinder the coverage of agriculture workers in social insurance schemes, and suggest possible strategies that could be considered to address them. Also available in Arabic

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is a comprehensive system that requires thorough consideration of local climate, natural environment, market demand, economic and cultural environment. FAO introduced CSA at the Hague Conference on Agricultural, Food Security and Climate Change in 2010 and has been strongly supporting it since then. The development of CSA in China contributes to reaching its carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality in China by 2060.This publication introduces China's CSA development and provides policy proposals. It contains four sections: the background and development status of China's CSA; practices and achievements of China's CSA, including analysing case studies such as [...]

In developing and emerging contexts, youth of all ages and backgrounds face substantial and multidimensional challenges when seeking to access the financial services they need to take adequate care of several aspects of their personal and professional lives. These barriers to financial inclusion represent a core development constraint that limits the capability of the youth to unlock their true potential as entrepreneurs, business innovators, and – ultimately – as agents of growth and change in developing contexts. From the perspective of a financial inclusion practitioner, the ability to assess these barriers with insight and precision – as well as being able [...]