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Many social protection programmes, including cash transfers, public works programmes and asset transfers, target women as main beneficiaries or recipients of benefits. Extending social protection to rural populations has great potential for fostering rural women’s economic empowerment. However, to tap into this potential, more needs to be done. There is much scope for making social protection policies and programmes more gender sensitive and for better aligning them with agricultural and rural development policies to help address gender inequalities. Recognizing this potential and capitalizing on existing evidence, FAO seeks to enhance the contribution of social protection to gender equality and women’s empowerment [...]

Many social protection programmes, including cash transfers, public works programmes and asset transfers, target women as main beneficiaries or recipients of benefits. Extending social protection to rural populations has great potential for fostering rural women’s economic empowerment. However, to tap into this potential, more needs to be done. There is much scope for making social protection policies and programmes more gender sensitive and for better aligning them with agricultural and rural development policies to help address gender inequalities. Recognizing this potential and capitalizing on existing evidence, FAO seeks to enhance the contribution of social protection to gender equality and women’s empowerment [...]

Many social protection programmes, including cash transfers, public works programmes and asset transfers, target women as main beneficiaries or recipients of benefits. Extending social protection to rural populations has great potential for fostering rural women’s economic empowerment. However, to tap into this potential, more needs to be done. There is much scope for making social protection policies and programmes more gender sensitive and for better aligning them with agricultural and rural development policies to help address gender inequalities. Recognizing this potential and capitalizing on existing evidence, FAO seeks to enhance the contribution of social protection to gender equality and women’s empowerment [...]

Sustainable Development Goal 1, ending poverty in all its forms, everywhere, is the most ambitious goal set by the 2030 Agenda. This Goal includes eradicating extreme poverty in the next 12 years, which will require more focused actions in addition to broad-based interventions. The question is: How can we achieve target 1.1 and overcome the many challenges that lie ahead? By gaining a deeper understanding of poverty, and the characteristics of the extreme rural poor in particular, the right policies can be put in place to reach those most in need. This report presents the contribution that agriculture, food systems [...]

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) make a significant contribution to growth and socio-economic development in countries and regions around the globe. The widespread adoption and integration of ICTs has reduced information and transaction costs, improved service delivery, created new jobs, generated new revenue streams, and helped conserve resources. ICTs have also transformed the way businesses, people and governments work, interact, and communicate.  ICT innovation is also revolutionizing the agriculture and food sectors. In developed economies, innovations such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of things, data analytics and block-chain are changing the way agriculture does business. Remote sensors collect data on soil [...]

With the aim of eradicating poverty and hunger, FAO provides countries with evidence-based policy support to design social protection programmes that are nutrition-sensitive, risk-informed and shock-responsive, and advocates to expand social protection coverage to poor and vulnerable rural people. FAO, together with its main partner UNICEF, has been generating evidence on the productive impacts of social protection in rural areas and supporting the design of broader rural development strategies  that combine social protection programmes and agricultural interventions.  This flyer presents success stories from Zambia and Lesotho, showing how social protection can change the life of rural people, lifting them out [...]

Poor rural people are often excluded from markets and do not benefit from tailored technologies and rural advisory services. These constraints lower their agricultural productivity, perpetuating poverty and hunger. To achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, agriculture needs to become more inclusive, sustainable and productive. FAO helps countries meet the goals of eradicating poverty and hunger by helping poor rural households to better benefit from agricultural advances, increasing their yields and income generating opportunities.To do so, FAO promotes investments in agriculture, including livestock, fisheries and forestry, and supports the design of rural development strategies and programmes that address the [...]

This publication provides an overview of the methodology and best practices developed during the implementation of the Rural Youth Mobility Project (RYM) in Tunisia and Ethiopia, while decsribing the results acheived at country level. The Project was launched in 2015 to address the drivers of rural out-migration of youth - such as poverty, food insecurity and unemployment - while at the same time harnessing the development potential of migratory movements. With funding from the Italian Development Cooperation, RYM strives to shed lights on the drivers and patterns of rural migration and enhance governments’ capacity to better address migration issues in the context [...]

After years of steady decline, child labour in agriculture has started to rise again in recent years driven in part by an increase in conflicts and climate-induced disasters. This worrisome trend, not only threatens the wellbeing of millions of children, but also undermines efforts to end global hunger and poverty. FAO Rural Livelihoods Officer Bernd Seiffert elaborates on ways to improve the safety and health of young workers and end child hazardous labour.

This brief describes what parliamentarians need to know about the current nutrition situation in the world and how our food systems are  haping food environments that steer people towards unhealthy diets which are one of the causal factors of malnutrition. Parliamentarians are well placed to facilitate action to transform the world’s current food systems. This brief gives concrete examples of measures through which policymakers can influence food systems so as to promote healthy diets and prevent malnutrition in all its forms, including undernourishment, stunting, wasting, micronutrient deficiencies, overweight and obesity, as well as dietrelated non-communicable diseases (NCDs).