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Rural inequalities - events

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The Independent Office of Evaluation of IFAD organized  an international conference on Rural Inequalities: Evaluating approaches to overcome disparities on 2 and 3 May 2018 at IFAD headquarters. The conference explored critical questions regarding whether strategies and programmes that aim to eradicate rural poverty reduce disparities within rural areas.

The conference was an enriching one, with 5 panel sessions, 15 breakout sessions and 59 speakers. More than 200 participants from all over the globe attended and shared new experiences and knowledge during the conference. It allowed for a discussion on the importance of stay ahead of the innovation curve by capturing inequalities and the implications thereof to the evaluation functions in our organizations.

The number of people living in extreme poverty stands at 836 million. This figure is especially alarming given the rise in the estimated number of chronically undernourished people in the world – from 777 million in 2015 to 815 million in 2016. In all regions of the world, rates of extreme poverty and food insecurity are higher in rural areas, where three-quarters of the extremely poor and food-insecure people live.

A wide range of approaches have been adopted to reduce rural poverty, from social protection to sustainable livelihoods to wealth creation. The impact of such approaches on rural poverty is typically measured in terms of household incomes and assets, and social empowerment, food security and agricultural productivity, and institutions and polices. The underlying measure of success is whether these approaches have contributed to reducing inequality within rural communities.

Evaluation has the potential to inform organizations and governments if their interventions are indeed contributing to reducing inequality within rural communities. This Conference contributed to reorient strategies towards higher impact.

Resources

Rural poverty results from inequalities in groups, households and individuals to access resources (such as income, land, inputs, capital, education and public transfer payments), their ability to use these resources, and their ownership of them. The sessions on this topic addressed what resources need to be redistributed, to what extent and how?

Resilience

The rural poor often lack the ability to cope with environmental degradation, climate change and economic shocks and risks. Sessions on this topic addressed how to redistribute risk to eliminate the "double punishment" of the most vulnerable.

Relationships

Social relationships are a key determinant to an individual’s ability to access resources and cope with shocks. Unequal power relationships tend to underlie other inequalities, particularly for women, youth and indigenous peoples, and can perpetuate intergenerational poverty. Sessions on this topic addressed how can relationships be rebalanced so that those "left behind" count, are recognized, and have voice?

Rights

Political rights and voice, ensured through the enactment and enforcement of laws and policies, are fundamental to truly eradicate rural poverty, particularly with regards to labour and land for marginalized groups, such as women, youth and indigenous peoples. Sessions on this topic addressed how  could policies, laws and rights serve as a remedy and means of institutionalizing equality?

International experts participated in this conference  and discussed how redistribution could result in sustained poverty reduction in rural areas from three angles:

  • Approaches and theories of change. Examining the impact of different development approaches on inequality and poverty reduction.
  • Measurement and data. Sharing methods for measuring rural inequality and resulting data from research and development interventions.
  • Findings and lessons. Discussing findings from evaluations and research on effective approaches and verified factors that contribute to or exacerbate disparities in rural areas. 
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Speakers

Day 1: Opening and plenary addresses
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Oscar A. García

Director, Independent Office of Evaluation, IFAD
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Oscar A. García

Director, Independent Office of Evaluation, IFAD
Oscar A. Garcia is the Director of the Independent Office of Evaluation of IFAD. Before joining IFAD, Oscar served as head of the advisory services at UNEP - Technology, Industry and Economics Division, Paris, providing guidance to the Partnership for Action on Green Economy. With more than 20 years in development cooperation, Oscar was senior evaluation advisor, at UNDP Evaluation Office in New York, overseeing programmatic and thematic evaluations. He was Managing Director of Proactiva, a consulting firm specialized in results-based management and development evaluation, and Director General for Trade Policies at the Bolivian Ministry of Economic Development. Oscar is the Vice-Chair of the United Nations Evaluation Group, and he was the Chair of the Evaluation Cooperation Group of multilateral development banks in 2017.
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Eko Putro Sandjojo

Minister of Village, Development of Disadvantaged Region, and Transmigration, Indonesia
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Eko Putro Sandjojo

Minister of Village, Development of Disadvantaged Region, and Transmigration, Indonesia
Eko Putro Sandjojo, BSEE., M.BA, is the Minister of Village, Development of Disadvantaged Region, and Transmigration (Kementerian Desa, Pembangunan Daerah Tertinggal, dan Transmigrasi) of Indonesia at the Work Cabinet who has been serving since July 27, 2016. H.E. Sandjojo holds a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Kentucky, Lexington in 1991 and a Master of Business Administration from the Indonesian Institute for Management Development (IPMI), Jakarta in 1993. In 2015, he served as Director of PT Sierad Produce Tbk after serving as deputy Director since 2009. He has also served as Independent Commissioner of PT Central Proteina Prima, Tbk.. H.E. Sandjojo then moved to Humpuss in 2007 as Managing Director, before returning to PT Sierad Produce, Tbk. as President Director in 2009. H.E. Sandjojo is a firm believer of the concept of leadership where a leader cannot directly take over the work of his men just because the results are not as expected. H.E. Sandjojo believes that leader must be able to prepare his men to perform perfection in their work.
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Joanne Levitan

Master of Ceremony
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Joanne Levitan

Master of Ceremony
Joanne Levitan is a Communication Officer at IFAD and has been working in the field of journalism and communications for twenty years. After completing a Bachelor of Journalism at Rhodes University, South Africa, she worked as a journalist and presenter in news and current affairs television. She later set up a television production company producing television shows and documentaries covering South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy. She continued working in television programming in Australia, focusing on stories about Aboriginal health issues. In 2010, she was selected for a Peace Fellowship at The Rotary Peace Center at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. Since 2011, she has been working at IFAD where she leads on video production and communication outreach for key global events.
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Cornelia Richter

Vice-President of IFAD
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Cornelia Richter

Vice-President of IFAD
Cornelia Richter is Vice-President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development. She gives strategic direction to the institution, and promotes corporate approaches and solutions. She has direct oversight of the budget, quality assurance and ethics offices. Before joining IFAD, Richter was Managing Director at GIZ, the German development agency. She brings extensive experience acquired in different fields of international cooperation through assignments such as Advisor for Planning and Research and Multilateral Institutions at the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation, Macroeconomic Advisor in Africa, and several managerial positions at GIZ, including Director General for Asia and the Pacific, and Director General for Global and Sectoral Issues.
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Martin Ravaillon

Professor of Economics, University of Georgetown
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Martin Ravaillon

Professor of Economics, University of Georgetown
Martin Ravaillon holds the inaugural Edmond D. Villani Chair of Economics at Georgetown University. Prior to joining Georgetown he was the Director of the World Bank’s research department. Martin has advised numerous governments and international agencies on poverty and policies for fighting it, and he has written extensively on this and other subjects in economics, including five books and over 200 papers in scholarly journals and edited volumes. His latest book, The Economics of Poverty: History, Measurement and Policy, was published by Oxford University Press in 2016. He is past President of the Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, a Senior Fellow of the Bureau for Research in Economic Analysis of Development, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, USA, and a non-resident Fellow of the Center for Global Development. Amongst various prizes and awards, in 2012 he was awarded the John Kenneth Galbraith Prize from the American Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, and in 2016 he received a Frontiers of Knowledge Award from Spain’s BBVA Foundation.
Resources (Sessions 1, 2, 3, 4)
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Ricardo Fuentes Nieva

Executive Director of Oxfam Mexico
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Ricardo Fuentes Nieva

Executive Director of Oxfam Mexico
Ricardo is the Executive Director of Oxfam Mexico since August 2018. Prior to that he was head of research at Oxfam Great Britain where he directed a high-profile investigation team to support the global campaigns and programs of Oxfam. Among others he directed the research on economic inequality which is widely referred to in both academic and political circles. Before joining Oxfam Ricardo worked in the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) where he was lead author of the African Human Development Report and co-authored various global reports. He has also worked in the World Bank where he was co-author on climate change and development for the World Development Report 2010. He has been part of the Ministry of Social Development in Mexico and worked for the Inter-American Development Bank. Ricardo has conducted research on topics of food security, climate change, social security and social policies, regional development, poverty and inequality. He graduated from the Center for Economic Research and Training (CIDE) in Mexico and received a Master’s Degree from the University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona.
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Violet Shivutse

Chair of Huairou Commission's Governing Board from Kenya
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Violet Shivutse

Chair of Huairou Commission's Governing Board from Kenya
For over 10 years, Violet Shivutse has worked as community health worker and home-based caregiver in the Shibuye sub-region of the Shinyalu constituency, Kenya. She provides direct care and support to hundreds of HIV-positive community members, including orphans, elderly and the critically ill. Ms Shivutse is the Founder and Coordinator of Shibuye Community Health Workers and a regional watchdog group, that works with local authorities to enforce land and inheritance rights of women and orphans. She works to build community resilience and combat climate change, and negotiates with authorities for gender-responsive policy. She trains women and local authorities in Local-to-Local dialogues to ensure equitable implementation of development policies. Violet has represented the Huairou Commission in policy fora all over the world, continuously pushing for rural and grassroots women’s inclusion at higher levels of dialogue. She is a grassroots representative on UN Women’s Global Civil Society Advisory Board.
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Máximo Torero

Executive Director, World Bank
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Máximo Torero

Executive Director, World Bank
Maximo Torero is the World Bank Group Executive Director for Argentina, Bolivia, Chile Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay since November 2016. Prior to joining the Bank, Dr Torero led the Division of the Markets, Trade, and Institutions at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). His major research work lies mostly in analyzing poverty, inequality, importance of geography and assets (private or public) in explaining poverty, and in policies oriented towards poverty alleviation based on the role played by infrastructure, institutions, and on how technological breakthroughs (or discontinuities) can improve the welfare of households and small farmers. His experience encompasses Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia. Dr Torero received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), held a postdoctoral fellow position at the UCLA Institute for Social Science Research (ISSR), and is a professor on leave at the Universidad del Pacífico and an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at University of Bonn, Germany. He has won the World Award for Outstanding Research on Development given by the Global Development Network (GDN) twice.
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Pablo Fajnzylber

Manager, Economic Management and Country Programs unit, World Bank
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Pablo Fajnzylber

Manager, Economic Management and Country Programs unit, World Bank
Pablo Fajnzylber is Manager of the Economic Management and Country Programs of the Independent Evaluation Group at the World Bank. In previous assignments at the World Bank, he has been Manager for Sub-Saharan Africa at the Poverty and Equity Global Practice, and Lead Economist for Brazil. Mr. Fajnzylber holds a PhD in economics from Michigan State University. He has published extensively on a variety of development topics, including on Economic Growth, Labor Demand and Informality, Workers’ Remittances, the Economic Causes of Violent Crime, and the Development Implications of Climate Change. In addition to authoring multiple World Bank reports on these topics, his work has been published in various professional journals, including the Journal of Development Economics, Journal of International Economics, Journal of Law and Economics, European Economic Review, World Development, Journal of Development Studies, and the World Bank Economic Review among others.
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Shi Li

Professor of Economics and Acting Director of China Institute for Income Distribution at Beijing Normal University
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Shi Li

Professor of Economics and Acting Director of China Institute for Income Distribution at Beijing Normal University
Shi Li is Professor of Economics and Acting Director of China Institute for Income Distribution at Beijing Normal University and a Non-Resident Senior Research Fellow at UNU-WIDER. Professor Li’s research focuses on China’s poverty, inequality, labour market and social protection using household survey data. He has written extensively on these topics, having published a wide range of journal articles, book chapters, and books. He has been a principal coordinator of China Household Income Project (CHIP) surveys since 1988. He is member of the Advisory Committee of Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, member of the Advisory Committee of Ministry of Agriculture, and member of Advisory Committee of Poverty Alleviation Office of State Council, China. He was a professor and senior research fellow at the Institute of Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences from 1996 to 2005.
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Hazel Malapit

Senior Research Coordinator, International Food Policy Research Institute
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Hazel Malapit

Senior Research Coordinator, International Food Policy Research Institute
Hazel Malapit is a senior research coordinator at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). She coordinates research, training and technical assistance on the implementation of the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), including refinement and adaptations of the tools for project-level use, and for capturing empowerment across the value chain. She manages and coordinates the integration of gender into the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH), and conducts research on gender, women’s empowerment, agriculture, health and nutrition issues. She is co-PI for the Gender, Agriculture & Assets Program (GAAP) (Phase 2), and is a member of the Advisory Committee for the CGIAR Collaborative Platform for Gender Research.
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Andrea Biswas Tortajada

Sustainability Specialist, Nestle
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Andrea Biswas Tortajada

Sustainability Specialist, Nestle
Andrea Biswas Tortajada has worked with academia, think thanks, governments, non-governmental organizations, and the United Nations Development Programme in fostering individual and collective innovation to further sustainability, human rights, and enhance people's dignity. Since she joined Nestlé in 2015, she has focused on advancing the role and contributions of private companies to the Sustainable Development Goals, gender equality, youth empowerment, and responsible value chains. Over the last couple of years, she has been shaping Nestlé’s Global Initiative for YOUth, an ambitious effort to help create economic opportunities for 10 million young people by 2030!
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Michael Taylor

Director, International Land Coalition Secretariat
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Michael Taylor

Director, International Land Coalition Secretariat
Michael Taylor is the Director of the global secretariat of the International Land Coalition, hosted by IFAD in Rome. He is a citizen of Botswana, and has a PhD in Social Anthropology. The International Land Coalition is a global alliance of 265 multilateral and civil society organizations based in 77 countries, working together for land governance that is people-centred, equitable and just.
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Ilaria Bottigliero

Director of Research and Learning, International Development Law Organization
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Ilaria Bottigliero

Director of Research and Learning, International Development Law Organization
Ilaria Bottigliero is the Director of Research and Learning at International Development Law Organization (IDLO). Her responsibilities include oversight of research, evaluation and impact assessment, as well as gender issues. Prior to joining IDLO, Dr. Bottigliero was Lecturer and Researcher at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Lund, Sweden, and at the Lund University Faculty of Law. Dr. Bottigliero was also Lecturer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and at the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law, teaching a variety of international law and gender courses to graduate students. Dr. Bottigliero has lectured extensively in Europe and Asia on various human rights and international criminal justice topics. She is the author of “Redress for Victims of Crimes under International Law”, as well as several scholarly publications on victims’ rights, international criminal justice and gender issues. Dr. Bottigliero is a ‘Hague Counselor’ for The Hague Project Peace and Justice, and the recipient of the 2010 Worldwide Universities Network International and Comparative Criminal Justice Network Fellowship.
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Hugo Beteta

Director of the Sub-regional headquarters in Mexico, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC)
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Hugo Beteta

Director of the Sub-regional headquarters in Mexico, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC)
Hugo Beteta is Director of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. Previously, he was General Secretary of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). In his country, Guatemala, Mr Beteta was Minister of Finance and National Secretary of Planning and Programming. He was also Dean of the School of Economics of the Rafael Landívar University. Mr Beteta studied Development Economics in the doctoral program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, (MIT). He holds a Master's Degree in Engineering and a Master’s Degree in Regional Planning at the University of Michigan In Ann Arbor. In 2007 he was recognized by the World Bank as one of the Top Ten Reformers of the Year, and in 2008 he was presented with the Isabel la Católica Order of Spain. Hugo Beteta was also awarded scholarships from of the Fullbright Commission and the Aga Kahn, MIT-Voorhees and MacArthur Foundations.
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Haridas Fernando

Group Manager- Agri Business Cargills Ceylon Plc. Sri Lanka
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Haridas Fernando

Group Manager- Agri Business Cargills Ceylon Plc. Sri Lanka
Haridas Fernando is one of the senior value chain experts in Agriculture and Dairy in Sri Lanka, with over 30 years’ field experience. He has successfully pioneered Private Public Partnership programs in Sri Lanka linking Rural Farmers to markets under the sponsorship of National and international funding organizations .As the Head of Agribusiness of Cargills Ceylon Plc,the largest Food Manufacturer and retailer in Sri Lanka, he has successfully developed many sustainable livelihood Projects creating markets for rural Agriculture and Dairy Producers and uplifting of the living standards of rural farmer community in the Country. He holds a Masters in Business Management from Rajarata University of Sri Lanka, and serves in several key positions in national bodies such the National Chamber Of Commerce and Sri Lanka Standards Institute .
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Rui Benfica

Lead Economist at the Research and Impact Assessment Division, Strategy and Knowledge Department, IFAD
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Rui Benfica

Lead Economist at the Research and Impact Assessment Division, Strategy and Knowledge Department, IFAD
Rui Benfica is lead economist for the Research and Impact Assessment Division, IFAD. He undertakes research in areas relevant to IFAD’s overarching goal of overcoming poverty and achieving food security. These include development research outputs, the design and implementation of impact assessments in client countries, and economy-wide modelling analysis to inform IFAD’s country strategies. Benfica has extensive policy research and outreach experience in developing regions. Before joining IFAD in 2015, he was Associate Professor at Michigan State University, USA. Prior to that, he worked at the World Bank as an economist with the Gender and Development Group, and Poverty Economist with the Africa region, Mozambique Country Office, where he worked closely with the Ministries of Planning and Development, and of Agriculture and Rural Development. He holds a PhD in Agricultural Economics from Michigan State University, with a focus on international development, commodity market analysis, and quantitative development policy research. He is a member of several professional organizations.
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Katsushi Imai

Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Development Economics, University of Manchester
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Katsushi Imai

Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Development Economics, University of Manchester
Dr Katsushi Imai is Associate Professor in Development Economics at Economics, School of Social Sciences. He joined the University of Manchester in September 2004. Dr Katsushi Imai serves as a research lead of the Development Economics and Policy RAG and a programme director of MSc Development Economics and Policy. He graduated with BA (Econ) from Univ. of Tokyo in 1990, an MSc from LSE in 1997, and a DPhil (Econ) from Oxford in 2001. Since then he taught at Oxford as a post-doctoral fellow at CSAE and Senior Associate Member at St. Antony's College, and at Royal Holloway, the University of London as Lecturer in Economics, before joining Manchester in 2004. Katsushi regularly works for the IFAD, the UN as a consultant to assist its policy making. Katsushi specialises in applied econometric works on risk, vulnerability and poverty dynamics of households, non-income poverty and evaluations of anti-poverty programmes in Asian developing countries.
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Alex Prats

Inequality lead of Oxfam Intermón
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Alex Prats

Inequality lead of Oxfam Intermón
Alex Prats has a bachelor’s and a master’s degrees in Business Administration (ESADE Business School, Spain, and McGill University, Canada), Master in Development Studies (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain) and MSc in Africa Politics (SOAS, United Kingdom). After a few years working for private sector, Alex joined Oxfam in 2003, where he performed different roles until 2011, including Regional Director for West Africa and Maghreb. In 2011, he joined Christian Aid in the United Kingdom as Principal Economic Advisor, where he led the organisation’s global campaign for tax justice. In 2014, Alex re-joined Oxfam as Deputy Regional Director in Horn, East and Central Africa, based in Nairobi, Kenya. Since September 2016, Alex is the Inequality Lead at Oxfam Spain. In this new position, Alex has led a process to define the organisation’s strategy against inequality, and, among other projects, he is currently collaborating with the LSE’s III to develop an Inequality Framework and toolkit for activists and practitioners.
Plenary panel
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Unni Karunakara

President of Médecins Sans Frontières Holland / Assistant Professor at Yale School of Public Health
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Unni Karunakara

President of Médecins Sans Frontières Holland / Assistant Professor at Yale School of Public Health
Unni Karunakara is President of Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders Holland and Senior Fellow/ Assistant Professor at Yale University. He was International President of Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders from 2010-2013. He has been a humanitarian worker and a public health professional for more than two decades, with extensive experience in the delivery of health care to populations affected by conflict, disasters, epidemics, and neglect in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. He was Medical Director of the MSF’s Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines (2005-2007) and co-founded VIVO, an organisation that works toward overcoming and preventing traumatic stress and its consequences. Karunakara serves on the Board of Directors of Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) India and is a Visiting Professor at Manipal University.

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Resilience (Sessions 5, 6, 7, 8)
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Cecilia Poggi

Social Protection Economist, Research Officer, French Development Agency (AFD)
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Cecilia Poggi

Social Protection Economist, Research Officer, French Development Agency (AFD)
Cecilia is an Economist at the Research Department of the French Development Agency (AFD). She is in charge of research projects on social protection and works on issues related to inequality, poverty and migration. Prior to joining the AFD in April 2018, Cecilia collaborated on different research projects with the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization on topics such as: poverty, social and labour market conditions (with a focus on Southeast Asia), internal and international migration. Her current research focuses on evaluations of social protection programs, forms of inequalities and on social cohesion. Cecilia holds a PhD in labour and development economics from the University of Sussex.
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Vidya Diwakar

Senior Research Officer, Chronic Poverty and Research Centre, Overseas Development Institute (ODI)
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Vidya Diwakar

Senior Research Officer, Chronic Poverty and Research Centre, Overseas Development Institute (ODI)
Vidya Diwakar is a Senior Research Officer in the Chronic Poverty Advisory Network at ODI. She is a mixed-methods researcher and policy analyst specializing in gender-disaggregated research on poverty dynamics, conflict, and education. She focuses predominantly on human capital development as a means of sustaining escapes from poverty, and the role of subnational conflict in perpetuating poverty traps. Her fieldwork centers on South Asia, while her wider research portfolio also covers the MENA region and sub-Saharan Africa. She holds an MPhil in Economics from the University of Cambridge.
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Birte Snilstveit

Senior Evaluation Specialist, International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3IE)
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Birte Snilstveit

Senior Evaluation Specialist, International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3IE)
Birte Snilstveit is a Senior Evaluation Specialist at 3ie with 10 years’ experience working on policy research and evidence uptake. She leads the design and delivery of policy-relevant systematic reviews and evidence gap maps (EGMs), including being a Team Leader of 3ie’s flagship systematic review on what works to improve learning outcomes in in low- and middle income countries. She also provides quality assurance and capacity building to teams conducting systematic reviews and EGMs, including as an editor for the Campbell Collaboration. A key focus of her work is developing and applying research methods that are both rigorous, relevant and timely, and to this end she spearheaded the development of 3ie’s Evidence Gap Map (EGM) methodology and led work on mixed-methods, theory based systematic reviews. Her current focus is on the use of technology for rapid and ‘living’ systematic reviews. Her substantive interests spans a number of topics, including education and climate change in particular.
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Diana Alarcón

Adjunct Academic Secretary, Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Mexico
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Diana Alarcón

Adjunct Academic Secretary, Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Mexico
Diana Alarcón was the Chief of the Development Strategy and Policy Unit at the United Nations Department for Economic and Social Development until retirement in September 2017. From this position, she led the writing team for the World Economic and Social Survey in the last few years. From 2011, she coordinated the work of the United Nations Task Team for the Post 2015 Development Agenda that contributed with analytical inputs to the definition of the Agenda for Sustainable Development. Diana has a PhD in Economics from the University of California, Riverside and has published on issues related to poverty, inequality, employment, and sustainable development.
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Bidisha Barooah

Evaluation Specialist, International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie)
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Bidisha Barooah

Evaluation Specialist, International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie)
Bidisha is an Evaluation Specialist at the International Initiative of Impact Evaluation (3ie), stationed in New Delhi, India. She leads on 3ie’s impact evaluation grants in the field of social protection and agricultural risk mitigation. Bidisha received my PhD in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics and has been working for 3ie since 2015.
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Lisandro Martin

Acting Director of the Operational Policy and Results Division and of the Sustainable Production, Markets and Institutions Division
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Lisandro Martin

Acting Director of the Operational Policy and Results Division and of the Sustainable Production, Markets and Institutions Division
Lisandro Martin is the Acting Director of the Operational Policy and Results Division (OPR) and of the Sustainable Production, Markets and Institutions Division (PMI). He heads the Fund's self-evaluation functions, including efforts to advance results-based management in country strategies and operations. He oversees operational policies and procedures, as well as systems to track operational performance and compliance. He works across departments to advance the Fund's transparency agenda and to implement the Performance-based Allocation System for IFAD financing. In this capacity, Mr Martin chaired the Multilateral Development Bank's Working Group on Managing for Development Results, and is a member of the Advisory Committee on the Monitoring Framework of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation. Before joining IFAD in 2015, he held several positions at the World Bank, both in HQ and in the field, the latest one being Senior Operations Officer in the Department of Openness, Effectiveness and Results. Among other accomplishments in this role, he led the creation of the World Bank Group's Results Measurement and Evidence Stream. Other jobs in the World Bank include efforts to advance citizen engagement, transparency, and results-based management in Bangladesh, Nepal, Kenya, Albania, and the Southern Cone of Latin America. He also worked at the African Development Bank where he initially led good governance operations in Southern Africa before taking various roles at the Quality Assurance and Results Department. In this last job, he created the first-ever results measurement framework for the African Development Bank Group. Prior shorter term assignments include UNESCO, UNESCAP, and the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr Martin holds a Masters in Public Affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University, where he was a Fulbright Scholar. He also holds a Bachelor Degree with Honors from Universidad del Salvador, Argentina and a Certificate in Conflict Studies from Uppsala University in Sweden.
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Federica Carfagna

Acting Director of the Research and Development department of the African Risk Capacity
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Federica Carfagna

Acting Director of the Research and Development department of the African Risk Capacity
Federica Carfagna is a statistician and currently acting Director of the Research and Development department of the African Risk Capacity (ARC). She has been with ARC since its inception in 2009 and is one of the main authors of the methodology underlying the Africa RiskView software, the technical engine of ARC, to model the impact of drought on vulnerable populations and create the country-specific risk profiles as a basis for ARC insurance. Ms Carfagna hold a Master’s Degree in statistics from the University of Rome La Sapienza and spent one year in an exchange program at the Cass Business School in London. Before joining ARC, she worked as a statistician for the World Food Programme, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs in New York and the Rome City Hall.
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José Pineda

Professor, Strategy and Business Economics Division, University of British Columbia
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José Pineda

Professor, Strategy and Business Economics Division, University of British Columbia
José Pineda is a Senior Consultant working with the Economic and Fiscal Unit, Resources and Markets Branch of Economy Division, UN Environment. José was a senior researcher for the UNDP Human Development Report. He has extensive research experience in the fields of international trade and open macroeconomics. Prior to joining the UN, he was Deputy Director of Research for the Andean Development Bank. He has also served as Chief Economist of the Venezuelan-American Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and as consultant for the Venezuelan Ministry of Finance, the Venezuelan Central Bank and international organizations, such as the World Bank. He also was professor at the Universidad Central de Venezuela in the field of macroeconomics. He is currently Adjunct Professor at the Sauder School of Business at University of British Columbia. José holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Maryland.
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Marco D'Errico

Economist, Reducing Rural Poverty, FAO
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Marco D'Errico

Economist, Reducing Rural Poverty, FAO
Marco d’Errico holds a PhD in Economics and is an economist at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. He joined FAO in 2009 and since then he has participated in resilience analysis. He is currently the responsible for the Resilience Analysis and Policies (RAP) team in FAO, implementing RIMA (Resilience Index Measurement and Analysis). He has been working in many African countries and in West Bank and Gaza Strip, India and Thailand.
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Pablo Arnal

Resilience and Outcome measurement officer, World Food Programme (WFP)
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Pablo Arnal

Resilience and Outcome measurement officer, World Food Programme (WFP)
Pablo Arnal oversees Resilience and Outcome measurement for the R4 Rural Resilience Initiative at World Food Program. He supports country offices to build robust M&E systems for the innovative R4 initiative, an integrated risk management program oriented to strengthen the resilience of vulnerable households to climatic shocks. Pablo has spent the past 16 years managing food security programs bridging the gap from emergency to development. Prior to joining WFP, he served as livelihood and resilience expert in West Africa with the Food and Agriculture Organization providing advisory support on the definition of strategies to reduce the humanitarian burden caused by recurrent climate shocks. Pablo held posts with the Spanish Agency for International Development in Mozambique, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau; and several international NGO’s in Burundi, Kenya and Mali. Pablo holds a M.Eng. in Agronomy, a MBA in Social Entrepreneurship and postgraduate diplomas in relief assistance, agroecology and international cooperation.
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Massimo Giovanola

Technical Specialist - Agriculture Risk Management, Sustainable Production, Markets and Institutions Division (PMI), IFAD
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Massimo Giovanola

Technical Specialist - Agriculture Risk Management, Sustainable Production, Markets and Institutions Division (PMI), IFAD
Massimo Giovanola is a Technical Specialist for the Platform on Agricultural Risk Management (PARM) at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). He is responsible for managing the PARM process in eight African countries. He works to define the appropriate strategies with the host governments and then guides the organization and implementation of technical studies on subjects such as country profiling, risk management and feasibility. He also develops and maintains partnerships with national and international stakeholders and partner organizations. Giovanola joined IFAD in 2014 from his previous position at Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Between 2000 and 2014, he worked in both emergency and rehabilitation-development programs for Burundi, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Tunisia, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan as Country Director and Program Manager with INGO (7 years) and FAO (7 years). His main areas of expertise are country strategy development and program management, agriculture sector, food-security and nutrition. Giovanola has a master’s in Animal Science from the University of Milan (Veterinary), a diploma in Business Administration from Varese, along with certificates and qualifications from FAO and IFAD in procurement, strategy development, food security and coaching techniques.
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Francesco Rispoli

Francesco Rispoli, Senior Technical Specialist - Inclusive Rural Financial Services, Sustainable Production, Markets and Institutions Division (PMI), IFAD
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Francesco Rispoli

Francesco Rispoli, Senior Technical Specialist - Inclusive Rural Financial Services, Sustainable Production, Markets and Institutions Division (PMI), IFAD
Francesco Rispoli is the Senior Technical Specialist in Inclusive Rural Financial Services at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). His responsibilities include technical review, operational oversight and support for IFAD rural finance projects at all stages of design and implementation, as well as monitoring the performance of IFAD investments and developing innovative financial products. He currently leads IFAD’s work on index-based weather insurance within the framework of the IFAD-WFP Weather Risk Management Facility (WRMF). Before joining IFAD, he worked with UNDP Kenya, first as the coordinator of the Microstart project and then as the Head of the Private Sector Development Unit.
Day 2: Plenary addresses
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Giovanni Andrea Cornia

Professor of Development Economics, University of Florence
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Giovanni Andrea Cornia

Professor of Development Economics, University of Florence
Since 2000, professor Cornia has been teaching development economics at the University of Florence. Prior to that, he has worked as Director of the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER, Helsinki), Director of the economic research programme at IRC (Florence), chief economist of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF, New York) and research economist for UNCTAD and UNECA (Geneva). Mr Cornia held visiting professorships at the Universities of Pavia, Bologna-Buenos-Aires, Clermont Ferrand, Cambridge and Helsinki. In 2010, he was visiting fellow at Nuffield College (Oxford). Cornia has published/edited 16 books on development and transitional issues, some 40 chapters in books edited by other authors, 70 journal articles and as many working papers in classified series. His main research interest are poverty, inequality, macroeconomics, agriculture and land reform, transitional economics, structural change and social policies. Cornia holds two master degrees: Economics and Statistics, both from the University of Bologna. He was the first president of the Italian Development Economics Association, and is a member of the European Development Research Network (EUDN) and of the UN Committee for Development Policies (CDP).

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Relationships (Sessions 9, 10, 11, 12, 13)
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Chitra Deshpande

Senior Evaluation Officer at the Independent Office of Evaluation of IFAD
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Chitra Deshpande

Senior Evaluation Officer at the Independent Office of Evaluation of IFAD
Dr Chitra Deshpande is currently Senior Evaluation Officer in the Independent Office of Evaluation of IFAD. With over twenty years of experience spanning both the private and public sectors, she is a results-based management expert with a strong background in agriculture, rural development and gender. At IFAD, she has served as the Special Adviser to the Vice-President, Portfolio Adviser, Operational Policy Economist in Asia, and Quality Assurance Programme Manager at IFAD as well as Strategy and Planning Officer at FAO. As a gender and development expert, she has worked for FAO, the World Bank and WFP - most notably on the Gender in Agriculture Sourcebook. As a management consultant at Booz-Allen & Hamilton, she developed growth and efficiency strategies for multinational companies. Dr Deshpande received her DPhil in Geography and MPhil in Development Studies from Oxford University and M.A. in Food Research and B.A. in History from Stanford University.
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Benjamin Davis

Leader of the Strategic Programme to Reduce Rural Poverty, FAO
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Benjamin Davis

Leader of the Strategic Programme to Reduce Rural Poverty, FAO
Benjamin Davis is Leader of the Strategic Programme to Reduce Rural Poverty at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). He has extensive experience in social protection, social policies and agricultural economics. He has previously served as Deputy Director of the Agricultural Development Economics Division at FAO and he was team leader of the From Production to Protection (PtoP) project. He has also worked as Social Policy Advisor for the UNICEF Regional Office in Eastern and Southern Africa and as a Research and Post-Doctoral Fellow at IFPRI. Benjamin Davis holds a PhD in Agricultural Economics and a Master’s in Public Policy from UC Berkeley.
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Piero Conforti

Deputy Director a.i., Statistics Division, FAO
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Piero Conforti

Deputy Director a.i., Statistics Division, FAO
Dr Piero Conforti is the Deputy Director ad interim of the Statistics Division at the FAO. He is an agricultural economist with more than 25 years of experience in food security, undernourishment and social statistics, capacity development (Sahel, Eastern Africa), rural livelihoods, monitoring of indicators for the SDGs, damages and loss from natural and man-made disasters. Since 2003, he has been working for the FAO starting in the Trade and Markets Division as economist working on long-term projections on food and agricultural markets. Prior, Dr Conforti worked as a researcher for the Italian National Institute of Agricultural Economics and for the Italian Institute of Nutrition. Dr Conforti has a PhD in Agricultural Economics from the University of Siena, a Master of Science in Agricultural Economics from Oxford University and the University of Naples "Federico II", where he also was awarded his first degree (Laurea) in Agriculture.
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Espen Beer Prydz

Economist at the Development Data Group of the World Bank
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Espen Beer Prydz

Economist at the Development Data Group of the World Bank
Espen Beer Prydz is an Economist working on measurement of poverty and inequality with the World Bank’s Development Data Group, based at the Center for Development Data in Rome. He has previously worked with the World Bank in Cambodia, South Sudan and Indonesia on poverty, social protection and economic policy. Prior to joining the World Bank, he did research on poverty, labor markets and gender with the OECD Development Centre and The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab. Espen is a Norwegian national and holds an MPA in International Development (MPA/ID) from Harvard University and a B.Sc. from the London School of Economics.
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Natalia Winder Rossi

Senior Social Protection Officer, Social Protection Team Leader, FAO
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Natalia Winder Rossi

Senior Social Protection Officer, Social Protection Team Leader, FAO
Natalia Winder Rossi is a senior social protection specialist with policy and programmatic experience in Latin America and Eastern and Southern Africa. Currently, she leads the Global Social Protection team in FAO, Rome, while acting as senior advisor for the Rural Poverty and Resilience Strategic Programmes. She is leading FAO’s work in strengthening policy and programmatic linkages between social protection, productive inclusion, nutrition and resilience. Prior to joining FAO, she was the Senior Social Protection Specialist (Social Protection) at UNICEF’s Regional Office for Eastern and Southern Africa, and Social Protection Officer in UNICEF-Headquarters in New York.Ms. Winder also as co-authored UNICEF’s Social Protection Strategic Framework. Prior to joining UNICEF, Ms. Winder worked at the Inter-American Development Bank. Natalia holds a Master’s of Science degree in Foreign Servicefrom Georgetown University, a Master’s of Science in Social Policy Research from London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and a BA degree in International Relations from George Washington University.
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Marielle Pepin-Lehalleur

Anthropologist, Retired Researcher, Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) France
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Marielle Pepin-Lehalleur

Anthropologist, Retired Researcher, Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) France
Marielle Pepin-Lehalleur is a French and Mexican anthropologist, retired researcher of CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), France. She studied the economy , family organization and social commitments of peasant households in different settings in Mexico, from indian villages tied to market-place merchants to highly tecnicized regions where they rub big farmers, technical support officers, banks and agro-industry ; political relationships between those different kind of actors ; public policies aimed at infrastructure, production or reducing poverty ; organization and meanings of elections at a local basis ; migration and its effects, in the sending villages and in the learning of new modes of living for the migrants in the city or in the USA. As an anthropologist, she always grounds her different topics on field work, in the countryside or in the city of Mexico and surroundings.
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María Teresa Gutiérrez

Technical Specialist on Employment Intensive Investment Programme (EIIP), International Labour Organisation (ILO)
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María Teresa Gutiérrez

Technical Specialist on Employment Intensive Investment Programme (EIIP), International Labour Organisation (ILO)
Maria Teresa Gutierrez is an ILO official, works as technical specialist for the Employment Intensive Investment Programme in Geneva, being responsible of the Americas Region. She is also gender focal point and promotes Rights-based approach and community-based methodologies for infrastructure development in support, mainly, of rural economy. Her professional formation is on social Anthropology and subsequent post graduate specialization in Rural Development, Gender and Human Development, having been linked to the Academy for more than two decades. Her work in the water and sanitation sector promotes job creation and skills development and women empowerment mainly at community level where applies gender and intercultural approaches, community and local resource based methodologies. She is confident with these approaches of the ILO/EIIP to promote the water-jobs relationship, where coordinated policies and investments are key to promote sustainable development. Her current work is putting more emphasis on developing tools to enhance sustainable water management; accessibility planning for water infrastructure to improve living standards and working conditions for the creation of more decent jobs and better social inclusion.
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Rita Kimani

Chief Executive Officer, FarmDrive, Republic of Kenya
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Rita Kimani

Chief Executive Officer, FarmDrive, Republic of Kenya
Rita Kimani, co-founder of FarmDrive is a young ambitious changemaker. Her life’s work focuses on leveraging technology to enable smallholder farmers in Africa achieve self-sustenance. She holds a First Class Honours BSc in Computer Science from the University of Nairobi and has proven expertise in conceptualising and designing solutions for emerging economies and fostering scalable innovations. Growing up in a rural farming community in Kenya, Rita experienced firsthand the frustration farming communities faced as they struggled to support their families through agriculture. Despite these challenges, sustainable agriculture is the best tool to significantly reduce global poverty and promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth while reducing inequalities. Rita resolved to use both her personal and academic experiences to build solutions that would equip farming communities with the resources they needed to thrive in their farming enterprises. She co-founded FarmDrive, a Kenyan-based social enterprise that connects unbanked and underserved smallholder farmers to credit, while helping financial institutions cost effectively increase their agricultural loan portfolios. Rita is passionate about engaging the youth who are key to achieve make up over 50 per cent of Africa’s population and with the energy, innovation and entrepreneurial flair that they have, are a key to achieving the vital Sustainable Development Goals. In addition to her efforts through FarmDrive, Rita has been at the forefront of bringing the youth perspective in building and executing programmes that support youth to be the force behind ending poverty, hunger, inequalities and ensuring decent jobs for all.
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Pontian Muhwezi

Uganda Country Programme Officer, East and Southern Africa Division, IFAD
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Pontian Muhwezi

Uganda Country Programme Officer, East and Southern Africa Division, IFAD
Pontian Muhwezi, is Country Programme Officer for IFAD, in Uganda, since April 2006. Immediately prior to this appointment, he was for 4 years, a Decentralisation and Rural Development Adviser for the Irish Embassy/Irish Aid in Uganda, where he assisted the Rural Development and Governance Attaché, to design and manage rural development programs, funded by the Irish Government singularly or co-financed with other donors, plus representation in donor and sector working groups on decentralisation, agriculture and private sector development. He previously worked with Government of Uganda first as a District Community Development Officer for Bushenyi District Local Government and later as a Senior Research Officer in Ministry of Local Government. He started his career in 1993 as a Research Assistant and later as Research, Planning and Documentation Officer with URDT, a local NGO. He holds an MBA (Finance), MA Development Studies (Agricultural and Rural Development) and a BA (Social Sciences).
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Michael Grimm

Professor of Development Economics at the University of Passau
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Michael Grimm

Professor of Development Economics at the University of Passau
Michael Grimm is Professor of Development Economics at the University of Passau. He is also a Research Professor at the German Institute of Economic Research (DIW) in Berlin, a Fellow at IZA in Bonn and an affiliate of the RWI Research Network. He holds an MA in Economics from Frankfurt University and a PhD in Development Economics from Sciences-Po Paris. His research covers problems related to poverty and growth such as human capital, informal labour markets and technology adoption in agriculture including the evaluation of policy interventions in these domains. He has conducted research projects and advisory work for several international organizations and donors including the World Bank, the United Nations and the Dutch, French and German Development Cooperation. He is currently coordinating a research project on female and youth empowerment in Tunisia with support from the ILO and IFAD.
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Estrella Penunia

Secretary General of the Asian Farmers’ Association for Sustainable Rural Development (AFA)
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Estrella Penunia

Secretary General of the Asian Farmers’ Association for Sustainable Rural Development (AFA)
Ms. Ma. Estrella Penunia is Secretary General of the Asian Farmers’ Association for Sustainable Rural Development (AFA), a regional farmers organization (FO) , currently with 20 national FOs in 16 Asian countries, with around 13 million family farmers as members. AFA promotes a five point agenda which includes rights natural resources, sustainable, integrated, diversified, organic , agro ecological systems in farms, fisheries and forests, viable farmers cooperatives and their enterprises, women empowerment and youth in agriculture. Its programs include capacity building, knowledge management, policy advocacy and internal governance. AFA co-manages a capacity building program for FOs called the Medium Term Cooperation Programme in Asia and the Pacific Phase II (MTCP 2),that is supported by IFAD, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and European Union and is implemented in 17 countries in Asia Pacific region. Esther spent more than three decades of professional years in the field of rural development, working in various capacities as community organizer, primary health care worker, participatory action researcher, trainer, gender advocate, consultant, campaigns coordinator, chief executive officer, board member and networker.
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Alessandra Garbero

Senior Econometrician, Research and Impact Assessment Division (RIA), Strategy and Knowledge Department, IFAD
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Alessandra Garbero

Senior Econometrician, Research and Impact Assessment Division (RIA), Strategy and Knowledge Department, IFAD
Alessandra Garbero is the Senior Econometrician in the Research and Impact Assessment Division (RIA). Her work focuses on impact assessment methodologies and applied econometrics. She supports RIA strategic management related to systematizing the impact assessment production cycle, particularly on the output side. The impact assessment production cycle entails a number of steps, from defining the theory of change and related indicators, to developing the tools for data collection, leading the training and the data collection as well as data analysis and results dissemination. In addition, she is in charge of the estimation and projection of corporate impacts. She holds a PhD in Epidemiology and Population Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, an Msc in Demography from London School of Economics, an Msc in Statistics and Social Research Methods from La Sapienza, and a Masters level degree in Economics from the University of Rome, La Sapienza. Her prior work experience involved working at the United Nations Population Division on population projections; in FAO, on the impact of HIV/AIDS on food security and agriculture and on gender disaggregated data in agriculture and rural development; and at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, on population forecasting, demographic modelling and vulnerability to climate change.
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Ragjav Gaiha

Professor Emeritus – Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNE)
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Ragjav Gaiha

Professor Emeritus – Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNE)
Raghav Gaiha is a former Professor of Public Policy at the University of Delhi, Faculty of Management Studies. His current affiliation is: (Hon.) Professorial Research Fellow, Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, England. His research interests lie in aging, violence against women, income distribution, rural poverty, agriculture, food prices, diets, malnutrition and disease, and rural public works and institutions. His book (jointly with Dr. S. Shankar) Battling Corruption: Has NREGA Reached India’s Rural Poor was published by Oxford University Press in July, 2013. A second book (jointly with R. Jha and Vani S. Kulkarni), Diets, Malnutrition and Disease-The Indian Experience, was published by Oxford University Press in early 2014. He has been a consultant with IFAD, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, FAO, and WIDER. Professor. Gaiha has also served as a visiting fellow/scholar at various institutions, including Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Yale, Penn, and University of Cambridge.
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João Pedro Azevedo

Lead Economist, Poverty and Equity Global Practice, World Bank
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João Pedro Azevedo

Lead Economist, Poverty and Equity Global Practice, World Bank
João Pedro Azevedo is a Lead Economist and Global Lead at the World Bank Poverty and Equity Global Practice where he co-leads the Global Solution Group on Welfare Measurement and Statistical Capacity for Results. In the past nine years Joao Pedro has worked in Croatia, Bulgaria, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Colombia, Brazil and the Dominican Republic and helped create and lead global public efforts such as the Global Team for Statistical Development, as well as Europe and Central Asia and Latin American & Caribbean Teams for Statistical Development, as well as LAC Monitoring and Evaluation Network. Before joining the Bank, João Pedro served as the superintendent of Monitoring and Evaluation at the Secretary of Finance for the State of Rio de Janeiro, as well as a research fellow at the Institute of Applied Economic Research from the Brazilian Ministry of Planning. He is a former chairman of the Latin American & Caribbean Network on Inequality and Poverty and holds a PhD in Economics.
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Dominique van de Walle

Lead Economist, Development Research Group, World Bank
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Dominique van de Walle

Lead Economist, Development Research Group, World Bank
Dominique van de Walle is a Lead Economist in the World Bank’s Research Department. Her research interests are in the general area of poverty, vulnerability, gender and public policy, encompassing social protection, safety nets and impact evaluation. Much of her recent past research has been on Vietnam, South Asia and Sub Saharan Africa. She holds a Masters in Economics from the London School of Economics and a Ph. D. in economics from the Australian National University, and began her career at the Bank as a member of the core team that produced the 1990 World Development Report on Poverty.
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Cathy Rozel Farnworth

Independent consultant, Pandia Consulting
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Cathy Rozel Farnworth

Independent consultant, Pandia Consulting
Dr. Cathy Rozel Farnworth (PhD) is a social scientist with a strong theoretical background and over twenty years of experience in gender issues in agricultural value chains, climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies, pro-poor and gender-equitable value chain development, food security and nutrition, participatory research methods, household methodologies, and measuring quality of life. Dr. Farnworth was a Global Author for the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) and the regional coordinator for the IAASTD Central and West Asia and North Africa Sub-Global Assessment. She prepared Module 5 ‘Gender and Markets’ for the World Bank’s Gender and Agricultural Livelihoods Sourcebook and was commissioning editor of a book called ‘Creating Food Futures: ethics, trade and the environment’ (Gower), as well as co-writing publications on gender and participatory plant breeding (PRGA) and on gender transformation in agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa (SEI). She has written numerous peer-reviewed papers.
RIGHTS (Sessions 14, 15)
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Ariane Genthon

Child Labor Expert, FAO
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Ariane Genthon

Child Labor Expert, FAO
Ariane Genthon is a Child labour expert in the Decent Rural Employment team of FAO. Ariane is a French national joined FAO in 2013 and since then, she has been travelling extensively to Africa and Middle East in the framework of her technical support to FAO decentralized offices. Prior to joining FAO, she worked for the International Labour Organization where her focus was on child labour, forced labour and migration/trafficking. She holds a Master’s degree in Human Rights and Humanitarian Law.
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Kanyinke Sena

Director, Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee, Republic of Kenya
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Kanyinke Sena

Director, Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee, Republic of Kenya
Kanyinke Sena is the Director, Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee (www.ipacc.org.za) and a lecturer at the Faculty of Law, Egerton University in Kenya. He is also a member of the African Commission Working Group on Indigenous Populations. Prior, he served as member and Chairperson of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. He has also served as Kenya Advocacy Officer for Minority Rights Group International, a member of the Indigenous Advisory Group of Conservational International among many others. Kanyinke holds a Doctorate in Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy from the University of Arizona, USA.
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Samantha Custer

Director of Policy Analysis, AidData, College of William and Mary
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Samantha Custer

Director of Policy Analysis, AidData, College of William and Mary
Samantha Custer leads AidData’s efforts to analyze official finance investments worldwide, conduct performance assessments of the development cooperation activities of governments and international organizations, and field surveys to learn from the experiences of decision-makers regarding the impact of external money and ideas on domestic policy reforms. She manages AidData’s 13-person Policy Analysis Unit and directs research partnerships with private foundations, bilateral aid agencies, and multilateral development banks. Samantha’s experience cuts across traditional boundaries between academia, policy, and practice. She has co-authored World Bank studies on open data and citizen feedback, advised governments and international organizations on language and education policy with SIL International, and coordinated the advocacy efforts of the Asia Multilingual Education Working Group for UNESCO. Samantha also designed and taught a course on US National Security with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Samantha holds masters degrees in Foreign Service and Public Policy from Georgetown University.
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Jérémie Gilbert

Professor of Human Rights Law at the University of Roehampton, United Kingdom
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Jérémie Gilbert

Professor of Human Rights Law at the University of Roehampton, United Kingdom
Jérémie Gilbert is Professor of Human Rights Law at the University of Roehampton (United Kingdom). He has extensively published on the rights of indigenous peoples, looking in particular at their right to land and natural resources. Jérémie has worked with several indigenous communities across the globe and regularly serves as a consultant for several international organisations and non-governmental organisations supporting indigenous peoples’ rights. As a legal expert, he has been involved in providing legal briefs, expert opinions and carrying out evidence gathering in several cases involving indigenous peoples rights across the globe.
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Papa Seck

Chief Statistician at UN Women
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Papa Seck

Chief Statistician at UN Women
Papa Seck is the Chief Statistician at UN Women. Since joining UN Women in 2009, he has led statistics and data work at UN Women. He leads UN Women's efforts to monitor the SDGs and is currently leading the implementation of UN Women's flagship programme initiative Making Every Woman and Girl Count, to improve the production and use of gender statistics to support the monitoring of the SDGs form a gender perspective. He also led the development of the Evidence and Data for Gender Equality programme, in collaboration with the UN Statistics Division, to develop innovative new measures and standards to measure asset ownership and entrepreneurship from a gender perspective. Prior to joining UN Women, Papa worked for UNDP as a statistics specialist, contributing to three global Human Development Reports. He is the co-editor of a book on the consequences of risk and vulnerability for human development.
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Osvaldo Néstor Feinstein

Professor at the Evaluation Master at the Complutense University of Madrid
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Osvaldo Néstor Feinstein

Professor at the Evaluation Master at the Complutense University of Madrid
Osvaldo Néstor Feinstein is a development evaluator and economist. He is a professor at the Master in Evaluation at the Madrid Complutense University, a member of the International Evaluation Advisory Panel of UNDP’s Independent Evaluation Office and the editor of the World Bank Series on Evaluation & Development. Osvaldo was a manager and adviser at the World Bank’s Operations Evaluation Department and a senior evaluator at IFAD. He has been a senior evaluation consultant with the IADB, AfDB, WB, Banque de France, IFAD, GEF, ILO, UNESCO, CGIAR and other organizations. Author of several publications on evaluation, development and economics.
Plenary panel
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Fay Fay Choo

Asia Director for Cocoa Sustainable Sourcing for Mars Incorporated
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Fay Fay Choo

Asia Director for Cocoa Sustainable Sourcing for Mars Incorporated
Fay Fay Choo has 23 years of experience in strategic sourcing and agricultural value chains development in Asia. In the past seven years, she’s led the cocoa sustainability development for Mars Inc in Asia that aims to transform the lives of cocoa farming families and communities towards sustainable and resilient livelihoods as part of Mars Inc’s Sustainable in A Generation plan.
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Rishikanta Sharma Aribam

Campaigning Coordinator at MGSA/Ekta Parishad
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Rishikanta Sharma Aribam

Campaigning Coordinator at MGSA/Ekta Parishad
Presently, associated with Ekta Parishad as Campaign Coordinator for Homeless and Landless Rights in Northeast Region of India. Guest Lecturer in Department of Social Work, Ideal Teacher’s Training Academy, Manipur, India. Worked as National Program Coordinator in MJVS, Madhya Pradesh, India, for Alternative / Solidarity Tourism in Partnership with TAMADI, France. Worked as State Targeted Intervention Mentoring Officer in Emmanuel Hospital Association (EHA), Manipur. Worked as a Manager in Child Rights And You (CRY), an Indian Funding Agency, in Regional Office Kolkata. Worked as Project Cum Research Coordinators in Educated Self-Employed Women’s Social Service Association and Institute of Social Work and Research in Manipur. Did Advocacy Internship Program in National Centre for Advocacy Studies, Pune, India. Worked as Project Officer in Nav-Drushtri, Mumbai. Completed Post Graduated Degree in Social Work, specialised in Urban and Rural Community Development under Pune University, India.
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Katia Maia

Executive Director, Oxfam Brazil
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Katia Maia

Executive Director, Oxfam Brazil
Katia Maia is sociologist and began her activism during her youth in the environmental movement in the city of Belo Horizonte, in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil. In much of her professional life, she worked with issues related to sustainability, development, international relations, human rights, food security and social justice. Katia devoted years of her career working in CSOs, being part of several Brazilian and international NGOs both in Brazil and abroad. She also assumed responsibilities in the federal government in the area of human rights. After 12 years working for Oxfam in Brazil and globally, in March 2015 she took on the challenge of leading the construction of a Brazilian Oxfam as the first Executive Director of Oxfam Brasil.
Closing session
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Masahiro Igarashi

Director, Office of Evaluation, FAO
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Masahiro Igarashi

Director, Office of Evaluation, FAO
Dr Masahiro Igarashi is an evaluation expert with more than 25 years of experience in development evaluation, economic analysis, organizational reform and policy development, and result-based management. He is currently serving as the Director of OED and has led the reform process of FAO’s evaluation function to enhance the quality of its evaluations and their utility to stakeholders. Before joining FAO, he served as Evaluation Advisor at the United Nations Development Programme, having led a number of evaluations and developed country programme evaluation methodology. Prior to this, he served as Programme Management Officer and Economic Affairs Officer at the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development, where he coordinated the organization’s work programme, led the development of results-based management system, and conducted economic analyses of trade system for development. He holds a doctorate degree in economics from the University of Queen’s in Canada and a master’s degree in socio-economic planning from the University of Tsukuba in Japan.
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The conference Rural Inequalities: Evaluating approaches to overcome disparities will be held on 2-3 May 2018 at IFAD Headquarters in Rome.
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Via Paolo di Dono, 44 00142, Rome, ITALY
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