Phrang Roy is the Coordinator of the Rome-based Indigenous Partnership for Agrobiodiversity and Food Sovereignty. He belongs to the Khasi indigenous peoples community of north-east India. He started his grassroots work in Western India in 1971 navigating bureaucracy and discovering the role of women as indigenous knowledge holders. He joined IFAD in 1981 and explored innovative ways of reaching out to the rural poor and led agricultural and rural development projects and policy. He was selected in 2002 to be IFAD’s Assistant President and became the first indigenous person to be appointed to the level of Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations. He then went on to join the Christensen Fund in 2007 that helped him discover his hidden interests in ecology and biocultural diversity. Phrang Roy is also the Founder of the North East Slow Food and Agrobiodiversity Society (NESFAS) and in the past served as a Member of the International Panel of Experts of Sustainable Food (IPES-Food) and Member of the Advisory Board for the Agroecology Fund.
Phrang Roy
