International Fund for Agricultural Development
Background
Dedicated to eradicating rural poverty in developing countries, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) was established to finance agricultural development projects primarily for food production. IFAD focuses on country-specific solutions to increase rural poor people’s access to financial services, markets, technology, land and other natural resources.
Areas of Focus
IFAD undertakes efforts to combat trafficking, address migration issues, women’s empowerment in the marketplace and ensure that legal support is available to rural women.
The IFAD gender team organized an annual award for the best performing projects on gender in each of the five IFAD regions. The awards ceremony was held on 25 November 2015 to make the links between gender equality and the importance of ending violence as a key element for improving the quality of life for many women.
IFAD supported inovative projects to address gender-based violence, such as the courage brigades in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India. (The courage brigades is a empowerment project initiated by the Indian state government with support from IFAD. Thtough this project, women are forming committees with local leaders and fighting malnutrition, caste violence, domestic abuse and corruption)
The IFAD gender team promoted household methodologies (HHM) in the loan portfolio: by enabling families to plan a vision for their household together and analyse why they are not currently achieving their vision, gender inequalities are frequently identified as one of the main reasons for preventing the household from progressing. Intimate partner violence is often cited as an area that needs to be addressed. HHMs are practices in several IFAD-supported projects eg Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda.