Save the Children’s ICN2 position paper
Context
“Adequate nutrition is a human right and delivers an excellent return on investment as one of the most cost-effective areas of intervention for catalysing development…. Despite significant progress in recent years, every day 805 million people are chronically undernourished and 162 million children under the age of five are stunted… 51 million children are wasted, and over two billion people suffer from one or more micronutrient deficiencies… [At the same time,] the number of overweight or obese children (aged 0 to 5 years) increased from 31 million globally in 1990 to 44 million in 2012. ”
Background
The International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2) – 19-21 November 2014 in Rome – is jointly organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHA). It will bring together ministers and representatives from 192 governments to demonstrate their commitment to ending malnutrition in all its forms.
Member states have agreed two conference outcome documents, 1) a Rome Declaration on Nutrition – a political declaration of intent – and 2) a voluntary Framework for Action (FFA) – containing a set of policy options and strategies for signatories to achieve the principles of the Rome Declaration.
Save the Children’s ICN2 position paper
Context
“Adequate nutrition is a human right and delivers an excellent return on investment as one of the most cost-effective areas of intervention for catalysing development…. Despite significant progress in recent years, every day 805 million people are chronically undernourished and 162 million children under the age of five are stunted… 51 million children are wasted, and over two billion people suffer from one or more micronutrient deficiencies… [At the same time,] the number of overweight or obese children (aged 0 to 5 years) increased from 31 million globally in 1990 to 44 million in 2012. ”
Background
The International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2) – 19-21 November 2014 in Rome – is jointly organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHA). It will bring together ministers and representatives from 192 governments to demonstrate their commitment to ending malnutrition in all its forms.
Member states have agreed two conference outcome documents, 1) a Rome Declaration on Nutrition – a political declaration of intent – and 2) a voluntary Framework for Action (FFA) – containing a set of policy options and strategies for signatories to achieve the principles of the Rome Declaration.
Save the Children’s ICN2 position paper
Context
“Adequate nutrition is a human right and delivers an excellent return on investment as one of the most cost-effective areas of intervention for catalysing development…. Despite significant progress in recent years, every day 805 million people are chronically undernourished and 162 million children under the age of five are stunted… 51 million children are wasted, and over two billion people suffer from one or more micronutrient deficiencies… [At the same time,] the number of overweight or obese children (aged 0 to 5 years) increased from 31 million globally in 1990 to 44 million in 2012. ”
Background
The International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2) – 19-21 November 2014 in Rome – is jointly organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHA). It will bring together ministers and representatives from 192 governments to demonstrate their commitment to ending malnutrition in all its forms.
Member states have agreed two conference outcome documents, 1) a Rome Declaration on Nutrition – a political declaration of intent – and 2) a voluntary Framework for Action (FFA) – containing a set of policy options and strategies for signatories to achieve the principles of the Rome Declaration.
Save the Children’s ICN2 position paper
Context
“Adequate nutrition is a human right and delivers an excellent return on investment as one of the most cost-effective areas of intervention for catalysing development…. Despite significant progress in recent years, every day 805 million people are chronically undernourished and 162 million children under the age of five are stunted… 51 million children are wasted, and over two billion people suffer from one or more micronutrient deficiencies… [At the same time,] the number of overweight or obese children (aged 0 to 5 years) increased from 31 million globally in 1990 to 44 million in 2012. ”
Background
The International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2) – 19-21 November 2014 in Rome – is jointly organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHA). It will bring together ministers and representatives from 192 governments to demonstrate their commitment to ending malnutrition in all its forms.
Member states have agreed two conference outcome documents, 1) a Rome Declaration on Nutrition – a political declaration of intent – and 2) a voluntary Framework for Action (FFA) – containing a set of policy options and strategies for signatories to achieve the principles of the Rome Declaration.
BRIEFING FOR THE 2014 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON NUTRITION 2
Save the Childrens ICN2
position paper Context Adequate nutrition is a human right and delivers an excellent return on investment as one of the most costeffective areas of intervention for catalysing development. Despite significant progress in recent years, every day 805 million people are chronically undernourished and 162 million children under the age of five are stunted 51 million children are wasted, and over two billion people suffer from one or more micronutrient deficiencies [At the same time,] the number of overweight or obese children (aged 0 to 5 years) increased from 31 million globally in 1990 to 44 million in 2012. 1 Background The International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2) 19-21 November 2014 in Rome is jointly organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHA). It will bring together ministers and representatives from 192 governments to demonstrate their commitment to ending malnutrition in all its forms. Member states have agreed two conference outcome documents, 1) a Rome Declaration on Nutrition a political declaration of intent and 2) a voluntary Framework for Action (FFA) containing a set of policy options and strategies for signatories to achieve the principles of the Rome Declaration. Key Propositions: Save the Children is calling for governments to:
Second International Conference on Nutrition (2014). Roundtable 3:
Governance and Accountability for Nutrition. Online: http://www.fao.org/3/aml933e.pdf
1. Make the policies and actions put forward in ICN2
Framework for Action specific and time bound to ensure implementation. 2. Work through existing initiatives and architecture for nutrition. For example, the Scaling Up Nutrition movement should not only be used as a monitoring and accountability tool, but as a major partner in implementing ICN2 commitments. 3. Ensure the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals hold governments accountable for delivering on improvements in nutrition for their citizens. The Conference Outcome Documents Save the Children values many elements of the Rome Declaration on Nutrition and Framework for Action. Specifically Save the Children welcomes Outcome documents signatories: 1. Stated aim of strengthening existing national nutrition commitments. 2. Declared motivations moral, human rights and economic for improving nutrition 3. Call for multi-sectoral, multi-stakeholder solutions. 4. Special attention to the nutritional status of vulnerable groups, especially children, women, and people in humanitarian emergencies. particularly establishing policies and strengthening interventions beginning with adolescent girls and continuing through pregnancy and lactation. 5. Proposal for a decade of action on nutrition to deliver 2025 WHA Nutrition targets. 6. Commitment to create an enabling environment for effective action, especially promise to develop National Nutrition Plans and national-level multistakeholder mechanisms for food security and nutrition. 7. Intention to achieve sustainable food systems promoting healthy diets, with a special attention to the position of smallholder and family farmers. 8. Commitment to health, WASH and food safety policies that reduce wasting, stunting and anaemia in women of reproductive age.
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9. Further inclusion of social and behaviour change
and communications (including interpersonal communication and media campaigns) 10. Promise of nutrition sensitive social protection measures In order to for the New Alliance Food Security Network, launched at the 2012 G8 summit, to realize its goal to increase private sector investment in a way that lifts 50 million people out of poverty, reforms are necessary. Strong transparency and accountability mechanisms must be established that empower small-scale farmers to be involved as key partners in designing and implementing the plans, and track progress. Additionally, to achieve the desired impact the plans must reduce malnutrition, which requires that targets and nutrition outcomes are set from the start. Given the inherently different mandates and roles between the public and private sector, the G8 must recognize New Alliance investments as a complement to, not a replacement for, core public investments in food security and agriculture. However, ICN2 does not guarantee a positive outcome for nutrition. Save the Children maintains the following concerns, which must be resolved either during the conference in the follow-up work: 1. A Principle concern is the Frameworks lack of specific, time-bound, prioritised, detailed, and measurable recommendations. This will make it very hard for populations and their civil society representatives to ensure implementation of recommendations at the necessary scale. We urge ICN2 signatories to individually take the floor to commit to specifics of the FFA, with measurable, time-bound detail. 2. We doubt that the FFAs recommendations for accountability will be adequate, especially because the establishment of national targets, intermediate milestones and national monitoring frameworks have been left as voluntary, state-centric processes. The accountability mechanism will need careful stewardship, starting with ICN2s Roundtable 3 Governance and Accountability for Nutrition. We feel accountability can be enhanced if: a) States commit to establishing (and resourcing) multistakeholder platforms for nutrition, as per recommendation for enabling environment. b) The United Nations establishes a formal follow-up process, requiring state- actors to account for their progress. C) For the proposed biennial UN accountability report to be annual and to be done in conjunction with existing nutrition architecture, especially the Global Nutrition Report.
3. Save the Children is deeply concerned by the
recommended actions to promote, protect and support breastfeeding. These priority actions need to be highlighted and strengthened to ensure the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes is adopted (not adapted) into national law and then enforced and monitored. All reference to the need for Governments to protect consumers, especially children, from inappropriate marketing and publicity must be made in relation to drinks as well as food. Member states should bring their maternity leave policies into line with the International Labour Organization (ILO) minimum recommendation. 4. Neither Outcome document explains ICN2s fit with the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals. A concerted effort is needed to ensure a positive outcome is taken-forwards from ICN2s Roundtable 1 Nutrition in the Post-2015 Development Agenda. 5. The United Nations has not detailed how all its nutrition related agencies, funds and programmes will coordinate their future work. We will call for these concerns to be addressed, starting with ICN2s Roundtable 3: Governments and Accountability for Nutrition. 6. The nutritional status of adolescents has relatively not been prioritised. We will call on our Civil Society Parents help ensure adolescents are recognised, alongside other vulnerable groups, as an essential constituency for breaking the intergenerational cycle of undernutrition. 7. There is a lack of information for the proposed decade of action on nutrition. It will now be important to influence these plans to ensure they do not lack the necessary ambition to deliver WHA 2025 Global Nutrition Targets. 8. The Scaling Up Nutrition movement (SUN) was not mentioned as a means for creating an enabling environment for action or ensuring accountability for commitments. In this way, ICN2 risks duplicating existing nutrition architecture and may violate the Do No Harm principle governments do not need competing National Nutrition Plans and Nutrition Action Plans. Instead, initiatives should support existing efforts to scale up nutrition. 9. There is a relative dearth of recommendations for nutrition specific interventions, particularly a failure to recommend all ten cost-effective interventions evidenced in the Lancet (2013) Maternal and Child Nutrition. 10. Its lamentable that member states missed an opportunity to specify the level of increased investments needed to eradicate malnutrition. It is also a failure of the declaration not to put a timeframe on its goals.
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11. The recommended actions for wasting miss the
opportunity to promote the improvement of identification and measurement of wasting both for curative and preventative purposes. 12. Social protection recommendations need to target interventions at the 1,000 day window and incorporate empowerment activities for women and adolescent girls. Furthermore, consideration must be also given to achieving sustainable livelihoods and behaviour change through national social protection systems. Specific comments on the Political Declaration: 1. We agree that food and agriculture systems need to be addressed comprehensively through coordinated public policies but this should be done with the aim of making food more nutritious. 2. Similarly, we support the Political Declarations statement that responsible investments in agriculture are essential for overcoming malnutrition. However, we feel that the Political Declaration should go further and detail how this should be done. E.g through national multi-sector platforms, governments integrating nutrition targets and indicators into agriculture plans and initiatives such as Grow Africa including nutrition targets. Save the Children would like to thank the organisers of ICN2 for all of their hard work in putting together the conference. Save the Children looks forward to working with the organisers and ICN2 signatories in implementing the commitments made during this important moment.