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Along the border of Côte d’Ivoire and Liberia, many communities are ethnically and politically divided. Land is at the heart of social, political and economic life, which makes land disputes and other related issues even more challenging. Tensions and conflict in Liberia, as well as the civil war, created an unstable scenario, where marginalized people increasingly take to demonstrating in cities, and roadblocks and even violence are becoming more common. Within this context, FAO, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) developed this project to promote the stabilization and cohesion of 10 communities along [...]

Gender equality is a key to eliminating poverty and hunger, as it has been demonstrated by the FAO throughout its research worldwide. As part of the FAO efforts on generating evidence and knowledge, and in compliance with the FAO Policy on Gender Equality, the purpose of the Country Gender Assessment for Uzbekistan is to contribute to the production of knowledge for better informed, targeted and gender sensitive actions in agriculture and rural development. It has been produced as it is required in the FAO Policy on Gender Equality. This Gender Assessment has served as a resource for the Country Programming [...]

This course is the first in the Rural Poverty Reduction series, and provides an overview of rural poverty, and why it is so important to overcome it in rural contexts. The course describes the key concepts and definitions of rural poverty and how it can be measured, its drivers and cross-cutting themes. Finally, it considers the connection with gender issues and the way that gender shapes the way poverty is experienced by rural people.

Advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs) have made information available to more people than ever before. These advances have also substantially increased their capacity to connect with each other in a continuously expanding number of ways. Rural women are currently (and have always been) last in line in terms of ICT access and use, even though women stand more to gain than most from active participation and engagement with these resources.   Evidence suggests that the ICT sector is both urban- and male-centric, ranging from the design of  ICTs to the gender of sector employees and decision-makers. Representation in the media is [...]

This guidance entitled Integrating Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in CSA Programs focuses on a set of agricultural practices to be implemented by small-scale food producers in developing countries. The purpose of this document is to provide agriculture development practitioners and policy makers globally, with guidance, tools and examples of successful integration of gender equality and women’s empowerment (GEWE) into climate smart agriculture (CSA) work, by demonstrating the necessity and benefits of incorporating a GEWE approach in CSA work; and presenting tested strategies for enhancing the engagement of women and particularly vulnerable groups in CSA work. With a view towards [...]

This paper sheds new light on internal migration processes by estimating migration flows for 31 countries, focusing on step migration and on return migration back to rural areas from urban areas. The approach is to estimate the shares of the population (by gender) that move or stay in rural and urban areas over three periods (childhood and two forward periods). Using data from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), the estimation was done with an information-theoretic procedure using maximum-entropy econometrics to estimate migration frequencies by population groups. Sizeable urban to rural migration flows are found, with rural returnees often contributing substantially [...]

Despite significant recent improvements in measuring resilience, there are still relevant gaps in the analysis. One of the relatively unexplored aspects of resilience is whether a genderspecific analysis of resilience capacity can become relevant for policy use. This paper contributes to the literature on resilience by analysing a data set with one of the most adopted resilience indicators and highlighting the emerging gaps. See more FAO Agricultural Development Economics Working Papers here  

Le rapport décrit les principaux résultats de l'analyse de résilience réalisée dans le Nord-Kivu, en République démocratique du Congo (RDC). Les agences des Nations Unies basées à Rome (ABR) qui comprennent la FAO, le PAM, et le FIDA avec l’appui du Gouvernement canadien mettent en oeuvre un programme visant à renforcer la résilience des moyens d’existence dans les contextes de crises prolongées en République Démocratique du Congo (RDC), au Niger et en Somalie.  Le programme a commencé en avril 2017 et se terminera en décembre 2021. En RDC, le programme est mis en oeuvre dans le territoire de Rutshuru dans la [...]

This brochure presents FAO ’s work on agricultural innovation. FAO advocates a shift from interventions focusing on single components of agricultural innovation towards a system-approach aimed at strengthening institutions and stakeholders’ networks that better respond to the needs of smallholder farmers. Agricultural innovation is the process whereby individuals or organizations bring new or existing products, processes or ways of organization into use for the first time in a specific context in order to increase effectiveness, competitiveness, resilience to shocks or environmental sustainability and thereby contribute to food security and nutrition, economic development or sustainable natural resource management. Innovation is central to [...]

This Resource framework is intended as a guidance tool for stakeholders involved in programme design, implementation and monitoring of Home-Grown School Feeding Programmes and the related policy and institutional environment, including, inter alia: governments and development partners providing technical and financial assistance, as well as civil society, community based organisations and the private sector. It is a knowledge product that harmonizes the existing approaches and tools, and builds on the wealth of expertise and experience with home grown school feeding models i.e. those designed to provide children in schools with safe, diverse and nutritious food, sourced locally from smallholders, with [...]