The rural economy holds significant potential for creating decent and productive jobs, eradicating poverty, ensuring food security, and achieving social justice. Yet, decent work deficits persist, with many rural workers living in poverty and working informally. As underlined during the United Nations Food Systems Summit in 2021, many of the Sustainable Development Goals will not be achieved unless we take action to make decent work a reality for all women and men working in agri-food systems and rural economies, thus ensuring that we leave no one behind.

Strengthening constituents’ capacity to formulate and implement policies and strategies for creating decent work in the rural economy is a priority for the ILO. ILO’s action is guided by ILC 2008 Conclusions on Rural Employment for Poverty Reduction which include priority areas spanning throughout the four pillars of decent work, while recognising the mandate and comparative advantage of the ILO in this field.