Decent Rural Employment

Background

In 2014, the Social Policies and Rural Institutions (ESP) division initiated to collect regional and country information on employment-related policies, programmes and institutions in order to inform the policy assistance provided to FAO members under Organizational Outcome SO3/OO2 on Decent Rural Employment. In 2015, the information gathered became an intranet policy database available to all FAO. After a positive internal testing phase, the database content was made available to the public through the launch of the present version in October 2016. The database is designed to be intuitive and easily navigable, providing an easy access to relevant information through a flexible searching feature.

This Database has been developed in the frame of the FAO programme Integrated Country Approach (ICA)” for promoting decent rural youth employment (2015-2017), with the financial support of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) under the FAO Multipartner Programme Support Mechanism (FMM). 

Methodology

  • Collection of information: The information available in the database is collected through desk review, informant interviews in the frame of ongoing FAO projects and web-based monitoring, using exclusively information already public and available online. The database is constantly and timely updated.
  • Classification of documents: Documents are classified according to their type (policy, project document, declaration, etc.), geographical level (global, regional, sub-regional and national), policy area (e.g. employment, social protection, child labour, etc.), target groups supported (e.g. rural people, rural young women, etc.) and contribution to the Decent Work Agenda in rural areas. For each document, information is also provided on the respective responsible institution and partners providing technical or financial support (e.g. FAO, ILO, World Bank, etc.) when available, as well as on year or time frame. With regard to the policy area, only the main policy domain in which the document falls is tagged. With regard to the link to the Decent Work Agenda, it is intended as Decent Work Agenda in rural areas. When a document refers to the promotion of Decent Work in general (or to one of its pillars), but without explicit reference to rural areas or the agricultural sector, the link to the Agenda has been classified as “indirect”. More information on how the link to a specific Pillar of the Agenda has been established, is available in the Table “Examples of DRE-enhancing actions under the four pillars of the Decent Work Agenda” at http://www.fao.org/3/a-i5471e.pdf.
  • Coverage and Expansion: The Database is expanded and updated on a regular basis. The initial set of countries and regions covered reflects the focus countries selected in partnership with FAO members under Outcome SO3/OO2 on Decent Rural Employment. The number of countries and regions covered and documents included will grow over time. For any interesting policy, strategy or programme missing that you would like to flag, please contact us at [email protected].

Disclaimer

The information contained in this database is for general information purposes only. The choice of countries or the number of policy documents per country is not representative of the countries engagement with employment and decent work issues. Please note that the database is not exhaustive; while we endeavour to keep the information up to date and correct, the database is by nature a constant work in progress and data can become out-of-date.