A $544,795 grant from the UN's International Fund for Agricultural Development is helping safeguard vulnerable farming communities in western and southern Syria whose livelihoods have been jeopardised by the Coronavirus pandemic.
The project will aid some 4,000 people in Syria's Homs, Tartous and Lattakia by providing seeds, essential agricultural inputs, and farm tools, as well as livestock and animal feed, Rome-headquartered IFAD said in a statement on Thursday.
“The triple burdens of conflict, climate and the COVID-19 pandemic impacts have had a profound negative impact on the agricultural sector as a whole and on smallholders in particular,” said Omar Ebrima Njie, IFAD’s country director in Syria.
“The Livelihoods Resilience Building Project is one step through which IFAD and partners can play their part to help mitigate the economic and social effects of COVID-19 on the rural poor in Syria, thus addressing food insecurity and contributing to more resilient rural livelihoods.”
The grant is part of the UN agency's Rural Poor Stimulus Facility, which was set up to help mitigate the pandemic’s effects on agricultural output, market access and on jobs by ensuring productive capacity through timely access to inputs, information, markets and liquidity, according to the IFAD statement.
“The agriculture sector has been hit hard by years of conflict and economic crisis, compounded by COVID-19, with small livestock herders and small-scale farmers the most affected,”explained Ramla Khalidi, Resident Representative of UNDP Syria.
“The project will help mitigate the economic and social effects of the pandemic on poor rural people while contributing to more resilient rural livelihoods," Khalidi said.
The LRBP project in Syria will be funded by IFAD and implemented by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the statement said.
IFAD has supported rural poverty alleviation and resilience building in Syria through eight projects with a total value of $547 million, of which IFAD financed $154 million, the statement noted.
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