Throughout 2013 GFAR provided technical input to the Drylands Systems CRP by supporting the integration of a gender and youth focus informed by gender experts of the Gender in Agriculture Partnership (GAP), and with direct support of two GFAR Secretariats staff - one of them tasked to drafting the Strategy - , as well as inputs from YPARD Secretariat.

The CRP DS Gender Strategy has been prepared to comply with the CGIAR Consortium Office's formal requirement that each CGIAR Research Program (CRP) submit a gender strategy to the Consortium Office for approval. It respects the template given in the Consortium Gender Strategy (2011), and draws on the recommendations of the Consortium Office's Assessment of the Status of Gender Mainstreaming in CGIAR Research Programs (30 July 2013). Since the Dryland Systems (DS) Program was the last of the 16 CRPs to be approved by the CGIAR Consortium Board,[1] the Strategy's preparation benefited considerably from the other CRPs' experiences in developing and implementing their gender strategies.