IFAD

(International Fund for Agricultural Development)

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Partnerships

IFAD has made efforts to consolidate existing and create new partnerships and to broaden its outreach. The Fund maintains strategic partnerships with a number of Bilateral Donors, in particular with the major Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.

Key aspects of these strategic partnerships are contributions to IFAD core resources, the supplementary funds, cofinancing of IFAD projects, participation in the associate professional officer (APO) programme and participation in the Government of Québec's International Internship Programme.

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Networks

Electronic regional networks:

• ENRAP(Knowledge Networking for Rural Development in Asia and the Pacific Region)
• FIDAfrique(Internet-based network linking 30 IFAD-funded projects and other partner organizations in Western and Central Africa)
• FIDAMERICA(Internet based network linking 40 IFAD-funded projects in Latin America and the Caribbean)

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NGOs

Why IFAD works with Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)
There is wide recognition that NGOs have a significant role to play in assisting the rural poor in breaking out of their condition of poverty. For IFAD, a major source of the strength of NGOs comes from their insistence on the empowerment of the poor as the key to the transformation of their livelihoods.

Empowerment can be as basic as enabling groups to improve their conditions through socio-economic development programmes or projects. But like IFAD many NGOs view empowerment as a much more encompassing process that enables people, particularly the poor, to confront and deal with the systems and structures that cause their socio-economic or political marginalization in the first place, with the implementation of projects being only one way. This more-embracing view of empowerment ensures that the poor build the capacity to advocate and protect their interests vis-à-vis government, the market or others actors in society. Empowerment therefore becomes essentially a transferring of power to the poor so that they can take control and change the structures and mechanisms that have caused their poverty situation and their condition of powerlessness.

From a practical point of view, NGOs have a number of distinct features that build a solid foundation for effective collaboration with IFAD in rural poverty reduction:

• able to reach segments of rural populations that governments neglect or do not target as a priority
• engage the poor in capacity-building activities as a major component in their programmes and projects
• recognized for their role in developing innovative initiatives, programmes or components of programmes, approaches and mechanisms to address development problems and issues
• possess extensive knowledge of local conditions
• deem active participation by the poor in their development process as an essential precondition to their empowerment %G—%@ participation not only in the implementation of programmes or projects but also in their conception, design, monitoring and evaluation

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International Organizations and UN agencies

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

• Average tariffs and quotas on agricultural products and textiles and clothing
• Domestic and export agricultural subsidies in OECD countries

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Global mechanism

The Global Mechanism (GM) was established by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) to promote actions leading to the mobilization and channelling of substantial financial resources to affected developing countries (Article 21, UNCCD).

The GM is conceived as an innovative brokering and partnership-building institution that helps to rationalize the allocation of financial and technical resources and to mobilize additional resources to combat land degradation and poverty.

What are the GM functions? In the spirit of the UNCCD, the GM response to growing requests for assistance has evolved along the following functions:

• Collecting and disseminating information
• Providing technical assistance and analysis upon request
• Promoting actions leading to cooperation and coordination
• Facilitating the mobilization and channeling of financial resources

GM Status and Accountability The GM performs its functions under the authority of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UNCCD, and is fully accountable to it. While the GM has a separate identity from IFAD, it is an organic part of the structure of the Fund directly under the President of IFAD. The GM is headed by a Managing Director who is responsible for preparing the programme of work and budget of the GM, which are reviewed and approved by the President of IFAD before being forwarded to the Executive Secretary of the UNCCD for consideration and approval by the COP. The Managing Director, on behalf of the President of IFAD, submits a report to each ordinary session of the COP on the activities of the GM.