社会保障

Capacity building to coordinate efforts. FAO and ILO team up to deliver a course on linking social protection with agriculture and food security for better, more coordinated efforts on the ground

02/11/2016

As a joint collaboration to linking social protection to sustainable food security and inclusive agricultural development, FAO and ILO’s International Training Centre delivered a course to nearly 100 participants, complementing each other around a common purpose.

This year’s Academy on Social Security (19-30 September) featured a partnership between FAO and ILO, jointly delivering a course on “Linking social protection with agriculture and food security”, to nearly 100 participants from 34 countries. Participants included government representatives from key countries where FAO is implementing important social protection programmes, and FAO social protection focal points, who provide day-to-day policy and programming support at the country level. Ten FAO colleagues likewise attended the course – six as trainers and the other four as participants.

As also recognized by The State of Food and Agriculture 2015, there is growing awareness that social protection measures will help break the cycle of rural poverty and vulnerability, when combined with broader agricultural and rural development measures. On the one hand, agricultural intervention – addressing structural constraints that limit poor rural households’ access to land and water resources, inputs, financial services, advisory services and markets – promotes growth in smallholder productivity. On the other hand, social protection can relieve liquidity constraints and improve risk management of rural households, thus enabling them to invest and engage in more productive activities. Nonetheless, coordination between agriculture and social protection is still quite limited, and actors involved often take different strategic approaches to reach similar aims.

The course set the foundation for fruitful dialogue, and sharing of ideas and country experiences on designing, implementing, and monitoring social protection frameworks The main aim of the course was to strengthen governments’, civil societies’ and development partners’ capacity to better coordinate agriculture and social protection efforts, in order to improve food security and enhance nutrition and household resilience in rural areas. It provided participants with the necessary knowledge to have an impact on policy, programming and institutional change, and to strengthen coherence between social protection, agriculture and food security.

One of the participants, Christine Mtonga from the FAO representation office in Zambia, appreciated the collaborative nature of this training, and the mix between technical aspects and practical features of social protection schemes. “The Turin experience has connected me with colleagues form various countries, working on social protection, and has provided me with the relevant information and perspective needed to push the agenda on social protection and agriculture forward”, she said.

While this course represented an important capacity-building opportunity for its participants, it also fostered linkages with key actors supporting FAO’s work in social protection at country level. Finally, it also embodies a growing and strategic partnership between FAO and ILO.