Learning by working together - Microprojects financed through the Indigenous Peoples Assistance Facility (IPAF)

Since IFAD began operations in 1978, it has supported, as part of its mandate to reduce poverty, many rural development programmes in which indigenous peoples have played an important role as stakeholders.

Yet, during the early decades of its existence, IFAD’s experience in many cases showed limited impact on indigenous peoples because project design and implementation placed indigenous peoples in a broader and undifferentiated category of poor rural people and did not consider the sociocultural dimension of their livelihood strategies.

Time and experience (including failures) and the evolving international framework led to the realization of the need for a better knowledge of indigenous peoples in all their diversity. This would allow a deeper understanding of their problems and their perceptions of poverty, and possible ways to tackle these problems with a view to supporting indigenous peoples in their own development.