Lessons learnt from India prove that people empowerment through self-help groups and target group orientation still matters for sustainable rural development. However, this is only true if economic, socio-cultural, political and environmental empowerment interlock. This article makes an argument for a grassroot-level and participative approach of people empowerment in regional rural development.

As part of its commitment to local community development in Mozambique, the Community Land initiative (iTC), a project financed by a group of European donors, is supporting part of a honey production chain in Mozambique, specifically in Sussundenga district, Manica province. The support consists of building capacity among local honey producers groups.

As the world continues to experience a severe food crisis, with over one billion people going hungry, land grabbing – the purchase or lease of land by wealthy, food-insecure nations and private investors from mostly poor, developing nations in order to produce food crops for export – is gaining momentum. Some governments and international agencies believe that the in? ux of money and technology can turn land grabbing into a win–win situation for all involved. But is this really the case?

Post-tsunami reconstruction has been under way in the Indonesian province of Aceh for nearly two years. In the authors' view, swift coordination of goals and instruments has enabled positive synergies to be created between short-term development-oriented emergency aid and long-term recovery. In this way, and by means of a conflict-sensitive approach, the aim is to guarantee the sustainability of the reconstruction effort.

The Voluntary Guidelines to support the Progressive Realisation of the Right to Food have served the very useful purpose of placing the right to food squarely on the international development policy agenda.To avoid practice lagging behind theory, concerted efforts are required by governments, development agencies and donors to implement these Guidelines to accelerate the realisation of the right to food at country level. Lessons learned from such learning by doing will help show how to put the right to food into practice.

The rural areas of the South have undergone vital socio-economic and technological changes marked by globalisation, economic liberalization and political decentralization and by the information and communication sector. Will these changes suffice to improve the living standards of the rural population and lessen the urban-rural gap or will the rural sector remain in isolation and be also in ten years time home of the poor?

A lot is expected of poverty reduction strategies, and high hopes have been placed in the Voluntary Guidelines on the right to food. One question frequently raised is whether it is possible to integrate the right to food into the established instrument of poverty reduction strategies.The present article discusses to what extent the two approaches can mesh to make a significant contribution to hunger reduction.

More than 70 percent of the world's poor live in rural areas.The World Bank's approach to rural development is holistic and multisectoral, focused on improving the wellbeing of rural people by building their productive, social, and environmental assets. The author of this article explores what this means in the longer term horizon of beyond 2015.

Development assistance is contingent upon the efficiency and effectiveness of delivery mechanisms. EU regional policy offers an appealing paradigm of how to achieve tangible outcomes with sound financial management

Following unanimous approval of the Voluntary Guidelines (VGs) on the Right to Adequate Food by FAO member states, with civil society's broad support, the question of «next steps» arises. To explore how to put this important new tool to use, the German government, with support from FAO and German NGOs, organized its fourth International Workshop on «Policies Against Hunger», held in June 2005 in Berlin.

Few aspects of development policy are better furnished with empirical evidence than the interplay between support for agriculture in the context of rural development and the reduction of poverty and hunger. It is therefore surprising that German Development Cooperation has today largely disengaged from activities in this area: Despite the evidence that practically nothing is more effective and sustainable than combating poverty where it is most often found, namely in the rural areas of poor countries,we fail to take that route.

Four billion people who live on less than two US dollars per day represent in total an enormous purchasing power. Multinational corporations such as Nestlé, Unilever, Danone and Dr. Oetker discovered these markets long ago and now seek to attract this customer group with new products and marketing strategies. It is time to take a close look at the effects of this development on poverty