Users may search the database by region, country, type of initiatives, level of intervention, year of implementation (or publication), or free text.

Yes. The search may be made by selecting any field or a combination of fields. Each specified field serves as a filter to the search results. The more filters applied, the more specific the search results will be. 

This field includes 7 options – Global, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Near East and North Africa, and North America.

The geographical coverage of these regions are referred to those of FAO’s Official Regions as hyperlinked Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Near East and North Africa.

Global refers to general entries that are applicable without special focus on any specific country or region. This field allows multiple choice.

To search information about any specific country or a combination of countries, please firstly select the region that the country belongs to. Upon the region being selected, all the countries of the region are available in the dropdown menu for selection.

If a region is selected but no country selected under that region, then the results would only include those of regional level. 

If a region is selected and a country or several countries of that region also selected, then the results would include those of the selected country (or countries) concerned.

The list of countries covers only those of FAO’s official Member States.

Please note that the country coverage of FAO’s Official Regions is different from those of geographical regions. For example, Egypt and Morrocco can be found in Near East and North Africa region but not in Africa region (in FAO terms). Similarly, Kazakhstan can be found in Europe and Central Asia but not the Asia and the Pacific region.

The records may be searched by time of implementation or year of publication in case of sector study.

To search all the relevant initiatives in a given period, e.g. from 2000 to 2010, select “Starting from” 2000 and “Ending by” 2010.

To search all the relevant initiatives in a given year, e.g. 2005, select “Starting from” 2005 and “Ending by” 2005.

This field support multiple filters, such as by countries or type of initiatives.

This field has 5 options – Laws or regulations; Policy; Program or Project; Sector review and study; Strategy or Action plan.

If Program or Project is selected, then a new field called Program/Project sub-category appears with a selection of 6 further options.

This field has 6 options – Global; Regional; Multiple countries; National; Sub-country; and Grassroot site only.

Global refers to general initiatives that are applicable to all countries but without focus on any specific region or country.

Regional refers to initiatives that may cover all the countries of a specific region (in FAO’s terms of region), though it may have not necessarily covered all the countries of a region. 

Multiple countries refer to initiatives that are designed to cover certain countries of a region or several regions.

National refers to initiatives that may cover all the parts of a country, though it may have not necessarily covered all the sub-country administrative divisions of the country.  

Sub-country refers to initiatives that are designed to cover certain sub-country administrative divisions of the country.

Grassroot site only refers to initiatives focusing on a specific site or several sites at grassroot level within a sub-country administrative division.

The search result will be displayed at the bottom of the Search page with some basic information, such as Title, Region, Country, Type of initiatives, Level of intervention, Start year, and End year.

Click the title of any search findings to open a new window with detailed information of the record. 

If a search results in more than 10 records, it will display the first 10 records, and the rest are available by clicking the tabs "Next" or the numbers below the displayed results.

The key elements of a search finding include:

• Title of the record
• Period (or starting year) of implementation (or the year of publication)
• Region or country it belongs to
• Short description about this record and keywords
• Type of the initiative
• Level of intervention
• Responsible agency (or agencies)
• Hyperlink to relevant documents
• Notes and remarks
• Source of reference

Most of the documents are not saved on FAO severs. This database only provides hyperlinks to those documents hosted on the servers of the third party, which may change the structure or paths of the URLs and so leads to deadlinks in the search results.

This this case, users are advised to search the internet with the name of the document to locate the file, probably on the same sever or other severs.

The search results may be displayed in any one of the 6 official UN languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish), but mostly in 3 working languages – English, French, or Spanish.

In most cases, a short description in English would be provided for records in other languages.

The hyperlinked document will be in the language as it was published. Other language version of the same document may be provided if available.

Yes. The search results can be sorted by title, region, country, type, level, and year of start or end.