In a joint effort, the organisations UN Women, FAO, WFP and IFAD are working to improve the living conditions of rural women.
A joint programme to empower poor rural women through economic integration and food security initiatives was launched by UN Women and the three Rome-based United Nations agencies working on food and agriculture at the end of September 2012.
The programme, “Accelerating Progress Toward the Economic Empowerment of Rural Women,” is a five-year initiative of the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and the World Food Programme (WFP). The programme’s financial framework is USD 35,000,000 and it is to be implemented initially in seven countries: Ethiopia, Guatemala, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Nepal, Niger and Rwanda.
The programme will focus on the following four goals:
Improving food and nutrition security of rural women.
Increasing incomes of rural women.
Enhancing leadership and participation of rural women in rural institutions and in shaping laws, policies and programmes.
Creating a more gender responsive policy environment at national and international levels for the empowerment of rural women.
This coalition between UN Women, FAO, IFAD and WFP is expected to generate synergies that capitalise on each agency's mandate, comparative advantage and institutional strength to generate more lasting and wider scale improvements in the livelihoods and rights of rural women.
