تعترف منظمة الأغذية والزراعة بالدور الرئيسي الذي تضطلع به الحماية الاجتماعية في القضاء على الجوع والفقر وفي زيادة القدرة الاقتصادية والإنتاجية حتى بالنسبة لأشد الناس فقرا وأكثرهم تهميشا. وتعمل المنظمة مع الشركاء من أجل تعزيز قدرات الحكومات على تصميم نظم الحماية الاجتماعية وتنفيذها وتقييمها، بحيث تتمكن الأسر التي تعيش في المناطق الريفية من الاستفادة منها.
FAO recognizes the key role social protection plays in eradicating hunger and poverty and in increasing the economic and productive capacity of even the poorest and most marginalized individuals. FAO works with partners to strengthen governments’ capacities in designing, implementing and assessing social protection systems, so that they can benefit families living in rural areas.
In particular, FAO supports national governments to:
- Expand their social protection programmes coverage to all poor rural households, in all agricultural sub-sectors, including fishery and forest-dependent communities;
- Strengthen the linkages and improve the coordination between the social protection, agriculture and natural resource management sectors;
- Design and implement social protection measures aimed at improving nutrition;
- Design and implement social protection measures that enhance families’ capacity to prevent, manage, cope and withstand crises and natural disasters.
Social protection and decent rural employment
The social protection team works with FAO's programme of work on decent rural employment to generate evidence on the impact of social protection on the employment conditions of rural people. Decent rural employment and social protection together can address the vulnerabilities faced by rural workers along their lives. More stable and secure working conditions in rural areas largely depend on a strong political commitment. FAO uses the generated evidence to engage in policy discussion and achieve buy-in from policy makers.
Social protection and gender-sensitive programmes
FAO works to:
- Generate evidence on the impacts of social transfers on farmers to improve their design and address gender-related issues;
- Strengthen the capacity of governments to apply a gender-sensitive approach in the design, implementation and monitoring and evaluation of social protection interventions;
- Uptake its research to trigger discussion around gender, social protection and rural development policies and programmes.