Livelihoods and Food Security Fund (LIFT) is a multi-donor fund that was set up ...
Livelihoods and Food Security Fund (LIFT) is a multi-donor fund that was set up in 2009, marking its ten-year anniversary this year. LIFT aims to strengthen the resilience and sustainable livelihoods of poor households by helping people to reach their full potential. This is achieved through interventions to increase incomes, improve the nutrition of women and children, and decrease vulnerabilities to shocks, stresses and adverse events.
LIFT is a significant actor in Myanmar’s development, which has received a total of USD 509 million in funding from 15 international donors since it was established. The current donors to the Fund are the United Kingdom, European Union, Australia, Switzerland, United States, Canada and Ireland.
LIFT has developed a refreshed strategy for 2019-2023, which has at its heart ‘leaving no one behind’ in Myanmar’s development process. The strategy includes a greater focus on inclusion and social cohesion, intensified commitment to gender equality and women's empowerment, increased geographical focus on ethnic/border states and conflict-affected areas, heightened efforts to bring displaced persons and returnees into LIFT’s development programmes, expanded support for underserved urban and peri-urban areas and broader engagement with Government at all levels on targeted policies that achieve gains in these areas.
Decent Work and Labour Mobility Programme
To expand the opportunities for safe and rewarding migration, LIFT began funding a USD 23 million Migration Programme in 2016. The seven projects supported by LIFT constitute the largest funding window for migration interventions within Myanmar.
Within the LIFT Strategy for 2019-2023, the Migration Programme has been subsumed into the wider Decent Work and Labour Mobility thematic area. This represents a shift in approach to engage more broadly with establishing conditions for decent work within Myanmar’s labour market, while maintaining a focus on internal and international migrants as some of the most vulnerable populations of workers.
Under the framework of this thematic area, the protection of fundamental labour rights will be the cornerstone for building a foundation for decent work in Myanmar. This approach makes explicit that the path to achieving sustainable and inclusive economic growth must be rooted in a labour market that provides fair wages and working conditions, allows for freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining, and does not permit forced labour, child labour or discrimination in respect to employment.