Member since: 2003
Working towards these commitments
Secure Tenure Rights
Strong Small-Scale Farming Systems
Diverse Tenure Systems
Equal land rights for women
Secure territorial rights for Indigenous Peoples
Locally-managed ecosystems
Inclusive decision-making
Transparent and accessible information
Effective actions against land grabbing
Mission
IFAD enables poor rural people to overcome poverty. Its focus is on poor, marginalized and vulnerable rural people, ─who are small farmers, landless people, labourers, herders, artisanal fishers and small-scale entrepreneurs who depend on agriculture and field-related activities to survive. The fund gives special attention to gender differences and to empowering women, who account for a disproportionate number of the world’s extremely poor. IFAD recognizes the particular needs of indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities, especially in Latin America and Asia.
The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a specialized agency of the United Nations, was established as an international financial institution in 1977 as one of the major outcomes of the 1974 World Food Conference. One of the most important insights emerging from the conference was that the causes of food insecurity and famine were not so much failures in food production, but structural problems relating to poverty and to the fact that the majority of the developing world’s poor populations were concentrated in rural areas. Poor rural women and men in developing countries are empowered to achieve higher incomes and improved food security.
Objectives
- To ensure that poor rural people have better access to, and the skills and organization they need to take advantage of: natural resources, especially secure access to land and water, and improved natural resource management and conservation practices.
- To ensure improved agricultural technologies and effective production services.
- To guarantee that rural people can acces a broad range of financial services.
- To ensure that rural people can operate in transparent and competitive markets for agricultural inputs and produce.
- To guarantee opportunities for rural off-farm employment and enterprise development Local and national policy and programming processes.
Constituencies
IFAD targets poor, marginalized and vulnerable rural people. The fund supports them in building their capacities to take advantage of the economic opportunities they offer. These are: farmers, small scale entrepreneurs, indigenous people and ethnic minorities, community based organisations, international community, non-governmental organizations and the private sector.
