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These Proceedings provide accounts of the expert presentations made by each Roundtable speaker and panellist, synopses of plenary discussion, and summaries from each Roundtable Chair. Taken together, the report comprises a compendium of analyses and illustrations of some of the most pressing challenges facing today’s nutrition advocates. These Proceedings are an important complement to the official ICN2 outcome documents; they provide background information, country examples, and rationale for many of the Rome Declaration and Framework for Action recommendations.

Cash transfers have become a key social protection tool in developing countries and have expanded dramatically in the last two decades. However, the impacts of cash transfers programmes, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, have not been substantially documented. This book presents a detailed overview of the impact evaluations of these programmes, carried out by the Transfer Project and FAO’s From Protection to Production project. The 14 chapters include a review of eight country case studies: Kenya, Ghana, Ethiopia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Malawi, South Africa, as well as a description of the innovative research methodologies, political economy issues and good practices to design [...]

FAO recognizes that scaling-up cash-based programming and risk-informed and shock-responsive social protection systems is a strategic priority in particular to improve food security and nutrition and protect households' assets as well as increase income of the most vulnerable population. Over the past 15 years, there has been a rapid increase in the number of countries implementing social protection schemes, mainly cash-based. Today, more than 1.9 billion people in 136 countries benefit from social assistance programmes and approximately 718 million people are enrolled in cash transfer programmes.

Building more resilient livelihoods is increasingly being recognized as one of the most powerful means to mitigate – or even prevent – food security crises.Since 2008, FAO has been at the forefront of efforts to measure the resilience capacity of people to food insecurity and the effectiveness of resilience strenghtening interventions. In this framework, FAO has pioneered the development and the use of Resilience Index Measurement and Analysis (RIMA).RIMA is an innovative quantitative approach that explain why and how some households cope with shocks and stressors better than others do. The first version of RIMA has been technically improved based [...]

Seventy-five percent of the world’s poorest people live in rural areas. The agricultural sector, therefore has a key role to play in poverty reduction and improving rural lives. Maya Takagi, Deputy Leader of the FAO Strategic Programme on Rural Poverty Reduction, together with Ana Paula De La O Campos, Programme Adviser explain the importance of promoting inclusive economic growth; long-term support to the rural poor; social protection; empowerment of rural women; decent rural employment; equitable access to land and resources; and strengthening rural institutions are key in creating new income generating opportunities. They describe the FAO policy work, including key policy [...]

From ending poverty, hunger and malnutrition to sustaining our natural resources to responding to climate change, food and agriculture lie at the very heart of the 2030 Agenda. FAO’s Strategic Framework is aligned with the SDGs, geared towards tackling root causes and Bringing numbers to life building a fairer society.

Social protection has helped lift millions of people out of extreme poverty.  However, seventy percent of the world population, particularly in rural areas, still lack social protection coverage. Benjamin Davis, Strategic Programme Leader ad interim of the FAO Strategic Programme on Rural Poverty Reduction together with Natalia Winder Rossi, Social Protection Team Leader of the FAO Social Policies and Rural Institutions Division explain how enhancing social protection systems in rural areas can contribute to reducing poverty and ending hunger. They describe the FAO policy work, including key policy messages. See all videos in the Policy and Governance series :  AR  CH  EN [...]

Protracted crises exist in over 20 countries potentially affecting half a billion people. In these situations, undernourishment is severe, long-standing and almost three times more frequent than in other developing countries. Julius Jackson, Technical Officer of the FAO Agriculture Development Economics Division together with Luca Russo, Strategic Advisor of the FAO Resilience Management Team describe the complexity of protracted crises situations and explain the importance of strengthening resilience for improved food security and nutrition under these conditions. They describe the FAO policy work, including key policy messages. See all videos in the Policy and Governance series :  AR  CH  EN   FR [...]

Agriculture and social protection are fundamentally linked in the context of rural livelihoods in Africa. Poor and food-insecure families depend primarily on agriculture and partly on non-farm income and private transfers for their livelihoods, and are the main target of social protection interventions (FAO, 2015). When embedded within a broader rural development framework, stronger coherence between agriculture and social protection interventions can assist in improving the welfare of poor small family farms by facilitating productive inclusion, improving risk-management capacities, and increasing agricultural productivity – all of which enable rural-based families to gradually move out of poverty and hunger (Tirivayi et [...]

There is increasing recognition at the global level of the role that agriculture and social protection can jointly play in combating hunger and poverty. Efforts are also being made at the country level, in Africa and elsewhere, to bring together these two domains. However, more needs to be done. The full range of benefits to be derived from greater coherence between agriculture and social protection is not yet widely understood, nor are the means through which coherence can be promoted. This document presents a Framework for Analysis and Action with the purpose of filling this knowledge gap. By drawing from [...]