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Decent Rural Employment

Module 1: Integrated Country Approach
This module aims to assist policymakers, planners and development practitioners to build more integrated interventions to promote decent employment in agrifood systems.

Set up an Integrated Country Approach

The main rationale behind this module is that a more employment-enhancing approach to agricultural and rural development is needed. For this to happen, policymakers and planners, as well as FAO staff supporting them, should adopt an integrated approach to decent employment from the outset. This includes assessing the enabling environment for decent rural employment promotion and identifying the most relevant national and local institutions to engage with. The ultimate objective is to reduce rural poverty by creating better job prospects in rural areas and food systems for the unemployed, the underemployed, the working poor, and all those who are in vulnerable employment situations.

This Module offers a quick overview of FAO's applied definition of decent rural employment and of the main tools available for setting up an Integrated Country Approach. Emphasis is placed on promoting capacity development and the involvement of multiple stakeholders, including the employment and agriculture sectors, and public and private actors.

To be successful, an approach to promote decent rural employment at country level should aim to build synergies across capacity development, institutional support, knowledge generation and partnership creation. For example, providing skills development for youth without facilitating their access to markets and credit may result in failure. Each intervention will reflect national and local circumstances and take due consideration of different levels of development and national capacity. A successful approach should nevertheless include all of the following core activities to varying degrees:

  • Decent Rural Employment (DRE) assessments, focusing, when appropriate, on a specific DRE sub-topic (e.g. child labour) or value chain;
  • DRE-related capacity development activities relating to: qualitative aspects of work; the public and private sectors (including producer organizations and local government authorities; and employment stakeholders (e.g. ministry of labour, labour inspectors) and agricultural stakeholders (e.g. ministry of agriculture, extension services);
  • Activities to support youth engagement in agricultural development (e.g. skills development; entrepreneurship support; access to finance, land, productive tools and markets; group cooperation and collective action);
  • Activities to support women's economic empowerment and reduce gender inequalities (e.g. skills development; entrepreneurship support; access to finance, land, productive tools, markets and support services – such as child care – and group cooperation;
  • Activities to improve labour conditions in the agriculture sector, prioritizing child labour and forced labour prevention and elimination, Occupational Safety and Health (OSH), the situation of migrants, and the conditions of casual and seasonal workers;
  • Activities to improve the institutional and policy environment for decent work promotion in agriculture (e.g. development of OSH regulations, integration of a decent work section in an agricultural policy under review).


Resources

The following two resources will enhance the knowledge base of FAO staff to effectively promote decent rural employment, by providing clarifications on definitions and approaches (see first link)  or on existing policies and strategies in a specific country context (see second link):

Country-focused analyses:

These tools can assist planners and practitioners to set up an Integrated Country Approach to promote decent rural employment. The applied definition can be used to frame the approach at country level and set priorities. Specific tools are available to assist with conducting a context analysis or a capacity needs assessment, and to support the mainstreaming of decent rural employment in agricultural strategic planning:

Other relevant guidelines:

Web pages:
 

Case studies, lessons learned and success stories:

Videos:


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