JICA - Japan International Cooperation Agency

Mission 1
Addressing the global agenda

The advance of globalization brings positive effects, sparking economic development and providing people with new opportunities. It also has its negative side, though, including such effects as uneven wealth distribution and the cross-border issues of climate change, infectious diseases, terrorism, and expanding economic crises. These effects pose a threat to the stability and prosperity of Japan—which depends on resources from around the world—and the rest of the international community. The threat is particularly dire for developing countries. New JICA will make full use of Japan's experience and technologies as it works in concert with international society to address the various globalization-related issues developing countries face in a comprehensive manner.

Mission 2
Reducing poverty through equitable growth

Impoverished people in developing countries are particularly susceptible to the effects of economic crisis, conflict, and disaster and are constantly exposed to the risk of even deeper poverty. Moreover, growing wealth gaps are a destabilizing factor in societies. Helping people to escape poverty and lead healthy, civilized lives is a vital task not only for the growth of developing countries but also for the stability of the international community. To reduce poverty, employment opportunities must be expanded through equitable growth that gives proper consideration to impoverished members of society, and public services like education and healthcare must be enhanced. New JICA will provide support for human resources development, capacity building, policy and institutional improvements, and provision of social and economic infrastructure, thereby pursuing sustained poverty reduction through equitable growth.

Mission 3
Improving governance

A state's capacity for governance refers to its status as a society that can take the resources available to it and direct, apportion, and manage them efficiently and in ways that reflect the will of the people. Improving governance is of vital importance to the stable economic growth of developing countries. However, these states often have underdeveloped legal and judicial systems and administrative organs, which present obstacles to efforts to reduce poverty through economic growth. New JICA will offer support aimed at improving the fundamental systems needed by a state, as well as systems for effectively providing public services based on the needs of people, and at fostering the institutions and human resources needed to manage those systems appropriately.

Mission 4
Achieving human security

The advance of globalization causes an increase in various cross-border dangers and exposes many people in developing countries to civil strife, disasters, poverty, and other humanitarian threats. The concept of human security places individual human beings at its core, seeking to defend them from fear and want: fear of things like conflict, terrorism, disaster, environmental destruction, and infectious disease, and want in the face of poverty and in social services and infrastructure. By building up people's abilities to address these issues themselves, this approach aims to build societies in which they can live with dignity. In order to defend the weakest members of society from these various threats, New JICA will support efforts to bolster social and institutional capacity and to increase people's ability to deal with threats themselves.