The present Guidelines form part of a joint effort by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) to help countries achieve indicator 5.a.2 of Target 5.a in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by the United Nations in 2015. Target 5.a is to “Undertake reforms to give women equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to ownership and control over land and other forms of property, financial services, inheritance, and natural resources in accordance with national laws” and is measured by two indicators: Indicator 5.a.1: (a) Percentage of people with ownership or secure rights over agricultural land (out of total agricultural population), by sex; and (b) share of women among owners or rights-bearers of agricultural land, by type of tenure. Indicator 5.a.2: Proportion of countries where the legal framework (including customary law) guarantees women’s equal rights to land ownership and/or control.

This catalogue aims to improve the dissemination and outreach of FAO’s knowledge products and overall publishing programme. By providing information on its key publications in every area of FAO’s work, and catering to a range of audiences, it thereby contributes to all organizational outcomes. From statistical analysis to specialized manuals to children’s books, FAO publications cater to a diverse range of audiences. This catalogue presents a selection of FAO’s main publications, produced in 2020 or earlier, ranging from its global reports and general interest publications to numerous specialized titles. In addition to the major themes of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, it also includes thematic sections on climate change, economic and social development, and food safety and nutrition.

This technical guide is a product of the fruitful collaboration between FAO and UINL (MoU signed in 2016) which led to illustrate that the preventive administration of justice and notaries, as independent public legal officers, can play a key role in achieving the VGGT recommendations. By exercising their function responsibly and implementing best practices, practitioners in the preventive administration of justice can make a considerable contribution to improving the living conditions of citizens worldwide, to achieving sustainable livelihoods, housing security, rural development and environmental protection for the benefit of all citizens. The guide advocates for responsible governance of tenure through the use of the VGGT. It identifies challenges and showcases good practices. Preventive justice is analyzed to assess its contribution to the responsible governance of tenure. VGGT are used as an inspiration for the practice of preventive justice. All stakeholders are finally invited to cooperate and engage in advocacy.

Most rural women and girls experience multiple disadvantages in their lives, because of systematic gender inequalities. Structural drivers, including discriminatory norms, create and maintain gender gaps in development outcomes. Gender transformative programmes seek to address the underlying structural causes of gender inequalities and transform unequal gender roles and relations. This paper aims to orient the future policy, research and programmatic work of national governments, practitioners and development partners on the adoption of a gender transformative approach (GTA) to social protection to improve results on rural poverty reduction, food security and nutrition. Social protection interventions rarely explicitly address social and gender norms and power dynamics at household level and beyond, but there is a growing demand to understand the potential of social protection policies and programmes to contribute to gender transformative outcomes. This paper critically examines the scope for social protection to be gender transformative and discusses the available evidence on gender transformative impacts of social protection. It also aims to identify how programmes can realistically become more transformative in their objectives, design features and outcomes.

This paper considers various dimensions and sources of gender inequality and presents policies and best practices to address these. With women accounting for fifty percent of the global population, inclusive growth can only be achieved if it promotes gender equality. Despite recent progress, gender gaps remain across all stages of life, including before birth, and negatively impact health, education, and economic outcomes for women. The roadmap to gender equality has to rely on legal framework reforms, policies to promote equal access, and efforts to tackle entrenched social norms. These need to be set in the context of arising new trends such as digitalization, climate change, as well as shocks such as pandemics.

The Kosovo gender profile for agriculture and rural livelihoods aims to improve knowledge on gender‑related issues in agriculture. It proposes evidence‑based recommendations for advancing gender equality and women’s economic empowerment in agriculture and rural development, including ensuring women's access to digital tools. The recommendations seek to inform several strategies and programmes as per the authorities’ commitments to ensuring that these are informed by gender analysis. This gender assessment begins with an overview of gender equality in Kosovo, examining the agriculture sector, legal framework, demographics, migration, politics, education, food security, nutrition, vulnerabilities to climate change, health, gender‑based violence and intersectional inequalities affecting vulnerable groups. It identifies ways to enhance inclusive agricultural development and the sustainable development of rural communities, considering gender roles and differences among diverse women and men in access to productive resources, inputs, information and participation. It proposes evidence‑based recommendations for gender‑responsive strategies towards women’s empowerment in the agriculture sector, rural development, and sustainable and transformative agrifood systems, and inclusive digital strategies.

Despite the legal and policy foundation of BiH, gender considerations have only marginally been mainstreamed in state and entity policies on rural development or other sectors related to agriculture. At the state level, the Strategic Plan for Rural Development of Bosnia and Herzegovina (2018-2021) addresses support for women as a cross-cutting initiative but fails to fully mainstream gender. Rather, the strategy includes a stand-alone sub-section on gender equality that presents rather superficial analysis of gender disparities in rural areas and includes no strategic guidance. Measures are suggested for “young people/women” in combination and for improving access to business grants, rural loans and agricultural associations. One monitoring indicator measures “women’s participation” in investment programs for agricultural holdings and diversification of rural economy (Strategic Plan for Rural Development of Bosnia and Herzegovina (2018-2021). The inconsistent application of gender mainstreaming to policy development and the very limited capacity of most line ministries to include a gender perspective in their core work contribute to a situation in which gender equality is poorly reflected in state policies that concern agriculture and rural development. Meanwhile, rural areas are marked by women’s poverty, which is linked to their economic dependence, over representation in informal and unpaid work, and the fact that elderly rural women in particular tend not to be covered by the pension system and are often living alone because they are widowed.

Sustainable development depends on maintaining long-term economic, social, and environmental capital. In failing to make the best use of their female populations, most countries are underinvesting in the human capital needed to assure ...