FAO is supporting the sustainable reintegration of returnees through livelihoods support and a large-scale project with the Green Climate Fund aimed at increasing climate resilience of smallholder farmers and food systems in El Salvador. The project seeks to boost resilience of family farmers by transforming food systems and improving rural infrastructure, thus addressing an adverse driver of migration.
The Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program was established in 1974. It has proven to be a successful labour mobility program between Canada and Mexico; it is a model of international cooperation that has demonstrated the possibility to maintain an effective and regulated flow of migrant workers between the two countries.
Supporting refugee farming initiatives in rural and regional Australia: This initiative evolved spontaneously from research led by University of Wollongong and University of Melbourne academics in partnership with a community-based food cooperative Food Next Door. The researchers were able to connect Burundi refugees and former refugees, who are ‘landless farmers’, with donated farmland and with Food Next Door and the Sunraysia Burundian Garden to grow culturally important crops.
FAO is working towards building the capacity of poor and vulnerable youth in migration prone areas, including cash transfers beneficiaries, and engaging them in productive activities along agro-food value chains; and support youth entrepreneurs to scale-up their businesses along selected value chains.
The Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot is a community-driven program designed to spread the benefits of economic immigration to smaller communities by creating a path to permanent residence for skilled foreign workers who want to work and live in rural communities where they can quickly become self-sufficient, and exercise their skills in agriculture and food production. This innovative, economic pilot will test a new community-driven approach to attracting and retaining newcomers to communities across Ontario, the Western provinces and the territories.
FAO supports rural youthwith alternatives to migration in a number of countries through fostering decent rural employment in sustainable agriculture and agribusiness along value chains.
The second implementation phase (2015-2018) of FAO's Integrated Country Approach (ICA) for boosting decent jobs for youth in the agri-food system targeted Senegal, Uganda and Guatemala. FAO's efforts in this programme are aimed at providing rural youth with alternatives to migration through decent rural employment in agricultural value chains, and by fostering diaspora engagement in agri-business.
The Ethiopian National Rural Job Opportunity Creation Strategy targets rural job seekers, primarily the unemployed and underemployed, literate and illiterate, and those without regular and sufficient income, both women and men, who are above 15 years of age. Furthermore, landless and school drop outs, technical and vocational trainees, and university graduates, farmers evicted from their land due to the expansion of urbanization and industrialization and those who need special support because of disability will be potential beneficiaries of the strategy.
FAO is supporting the channeling of remittances (using the “1+1” matching approach) for agricultural development, nutrition and social protection in national food systems, including by assisting migrants and their families and communities in formulating small- and medium-scale enterprises in fruit, vegetable and livestock production and agribusiness.
In 2016 IFAD launched its 6th Global Call for Proposals: Scaling Up Remittances (SURE) aiming at financing innovative models to increase economic opportunities for the rural poor by leveraging the impact of remittances and diaspora investment for rural development.