IFAD’s fourth Strategic Framework covers the period 2011-2015. It presents IFAD’s overarching goal, objectives and thematic areas of focus. It also articulates the principles of engagement that will guide operations and how IFAD will deliver against the framework. IFAD’s unique mandate is improving rural food security and nutrition, and enabling rural women and men to overcome poverty. In today’s changing global context, with new opportunities and challenges facing poor rural people, pursuing this mandate calls for honing IFAD’s strategies and instruments to achieve greater and more sustainable impact. This does not entail radical changes in what IFAD does. Rather, it requires building on what IFAD has learned about small-scale agriculture and rural poverty reduction in more than 30 years, by better leveraging its comparative advantages together with a range of partners.