December 2003
GFAR Secretariat News
GFAR Statutory Meetings 2003
ICT
Global Initiatives/Facilitation Units
News from the Regional Fora
West Asia & North Africa
Central Asia & the Caucasus
News from Stakeholders
In this issue
Tempus fugit...And before you know it, year 2003 is over!
Indeed, our dear readers, this is the last issue of the GFAR electronic newsletter for this year. This year has been a very challenging one for GFAR.
Armed with the Secretariat work plan for 2003 which was presented and endorsed by you in Manila and the tasks you have mandated us to do, we were able accomplish several activities that allowed for continued interaction among stakeholders. In this issue, we are sharing with you some of the activities carried out by the stakeholders in the last three months.
To start with, GFAR now has a new Vice-Chair from the NGO stakeholder group in the person of Ms Monica Kapiriri. She succeeded Dr. Willem van Wuure who assumed the post for one year. The turn-over was held in Nairobi in October 2003 during the GFAR Steering Committee meeting. The editorial of this quarter's issue of the newsletter is in fact written by Kapiriri. Also included in this issue are the highlights of the GFAR October meetings, including the informal session of all the Executive Secretaries of the five regional fora who met for the first time as a group. Together, they have discussed ways of improving inter-regional collaboration in the context of GFAR.
This issue also features some updates from the various on-going activities being carried out by stakeholders - GLOBAL.RAIS, link to the new website of the Facilitation Unit on Under-utilized species, results of the International Workshop on Post-harvest systems, cotton network, and Prolinnova (Promotion of Local Innovation). News from the five regional fora as well as from other GFAR stakeholders is also featured in this issue.
These are just among the activities in the last quarter of 2002. We will continue to keep you posted about the activities of various ARD stakeholders next year. We should mention that on 2-3 February 2004 a GFAR Retreat will be held in Florence, Italy to review and discuss the analyzis and synthesis of the recommendations put forward by stakeholders in the GFAR 2003 Conference and to develop a draft GFAR Business Plan, 2004-2006 and GFAR Secretariat Programme of Work, 2004. These two documents will serve as GFAR instruments in continuing its journey towards contributing to addressing the GFAR mission of mobilizing the scientific community and all stakeholders in agricultural research for development, in an effort to alleviate poverty, increase food security and promote the sustainable use of natural resource endowments.
Meanwhile, we wish you Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Happy Reading, too!
GFAR Secretariat
c/o FAO, SDR, Viale delle Terme di Caracalla - 00100 Rome, Italy
Tel. +39.06.5705.3413 Fax +39.06.5705.3898
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