The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) invites you to attend a side event on:

IFAD’s support to UNCCD: Enabling the rural poor to overcome poverty

on Tuesday, 2 September 2003
12:45 – 13:45
Meeting room 3, Palacio de Convenciones
Havana, Cuba

Side event presentation topics will include:

• links between rural poverty and land degradation in the drylands
• intervention strategies in Latin America and the Caribbean
• IFAD’s support for the UN Convention to Combat Desertification and its role as an executing agency of the Global Environment Facility (GEF)
• Global Mechanism (GM) strategies for resource mobilization

Schedule of events:

• Opening remarks by the President of IFAD Mr. Lennart Båge
• Intervention strategies in Latin America and the Caribbean and IFAD’s investment program in arid and semi-arid zones, to be presented by Ms Raquel Peña-Montenegro, Director of IFAD’s Latin America and the Caribbean Division
• IFAD’s support to UNCCD and its collaboration with the GEF, to be presented by Mr Rodney Cooke, Director of the Technical Advisory Division
• The resource mobilization strategy that the Global Mechanism is implementing in cooperation with members of its Facilitation Committee, to be presented by Mr Per Rydén, Managing Director of the Global Mechanism of the UNCCD
• Video featuring the Cauto River watershed project in Cuba
• Open discussion

Lunch bags will be served. Interpretation facilities will be available.

Contact information IFAD delegation: Ms Raquel Peña-Montenegro Director, Latin America and the Caribbean r.penamontenegro@ifad.org Ms Sheila Mwanundu Technical Adviser s.mwanundu@ifad.org Ms Farhana Haque-Rahman Coordinator, Communications Special Programmes Cell: 0039-335-7374859 f.haquerahman@ifad.org