Nutrition at the heart of international development | Obligation

After traveling around the world, the Olympic flame arrived in Paris, welcoming athletes and supporters for a summer of sports competitions.

We’ve heard athletes advocate for the importance of health and nutrition, which are essential to achieving their goals. Proper nutrition is truly essential to living a healthy life, fighting disease, and enhancing our physical and mental health. But eating healthy isn’t just something Olympic athletes need, and good nutrition shouldn’t be a luxury.

Access to nutritious food is a basic human need and recognized by international law as a basic human right. However, by 2024, with more than 2.8 billion people worldwide unable to afford nutritious food, nutritional outcomes seem out of reach for millions of people. malnourished.

Nutrition for Growth Conference

In 2013, while hosting the Olympic Games, the UK government recognized the need to tackle one of the world’s most pressing injustices: global malnutrition. On the sidelines of the Olympics, the UK hosted the first Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Forum, which aimed to bring together governments, donors, civil society, and many other stakeholders with the aim of addressing malnutrition. nutrition by 2030. Since 2013, Olympic host countries have shown commitment to maintaining the N4G process and hosting the Summit. By accepting the Olympic flame, the French government has taken its time, and has officially announced that the next N4G Summit will be held in Paris in March 2025.

The difference between the Olympics and the N4G Conference is symbolic. It raises one of the most important questions related to global inequality: why is it that in a world capable of producing so much wealth, millions of children are still dying from malnutrition ? Malnutrition can be prevented, and it depends on the political will to address this multi-level issue through strategic plans, and to provide adequate funds.

This is why the N4G initiative was created: to mobilize policy and financial commitment to address malnutrition worldwide. Participating in the N4G process, making high-level commitments and showing responsibility in their delivery is the most concrete step that governments can take to show commitment to the nutrition program.

What is needed to address global malnutrition?

Understanding malnutrition is important. Proper nutrition is not just about enough food, but the right amount of nutritious food, which meets the special needs of different groups of people. For example, women and adolescent girls are at risk of malnutrition due to physical factors: menstruation and pregnancy mean that women have increased nutritional needs, such as high demand for iron-rich foods. Pregnant women, the elderly and children also have special nutritional needs, which must be met to avoid the worst forms of malnutrition, such as spoiling children.

Addressing undernutrition requires interventions across many different sectors, for example, health systems and social security. It also involves rethinking our food systems and our global economy, as poverty and lack of resources are among the causes of malnutrition. Given the impact of gender inequality, conflict and climate on nutrition, addressing malnutrition also means addressing all the political, economic and social challenges of malnutrition at all levels. And that is why proper nutrition must be a central pillar in international development.

What should the UK Government do before the next N4G Conference?

In their announcement, Civil Society Organizations from the Global South stated what should be prioritized in the run up to the N4G Summit:

• Inclusion of civil society and local communities in decision-making.
• Integrating nutrition across all relevant development programs and policies.
• Commitment from governments and donors to accountability and transparency.

In order to meaningfully integrate what is needed in the response to the problem of undernutrition, governments must show a high level of political will at the next N4G Conference by committing to political changes and backing up their promises with pledges of finance.

The UK government has been a long-time champion of the N4G initiative and the fight against malnutrition. Unfortunately, cuts in Official Development Assistance (ODA) in 2021 have severely and disproportionately affected malnutrition programs from FCDOs, as shown in the Stocktake analysis of the ICAN UK coalition . However, by hosting the 2023 Global Food Security Summit, FCDO has played a positive role in addressing malnutrition and hunger crises.

The new Labor government must place nutrition at the center of the FCDO agenda, and commit to funding nutrition programs to support global efforts to end malnutrition. In partnership with ICAN UK, we recommend that FCDO make the following commitments at the Conference:

1. Commit to investing at least 500 billion in specialized nutrition programs between 2025-2030.
2. Increase the impact of spending on other key areas such as health, agriculture and climate by ensuring that at least £2.5 billion of ODA is dedicated to nutrition between 2025-2030.
3. Set a target to reach at least 50 million children, women and adolescent girls with nutrition-related interventions by 2030 and report annually on how many people are reached with direct nutrition interventions correct.
4. Integrating nutrition across development sectors, making meaningful progress in addressing the root causes of malnutrition. This includes setting ambitious goals to integrate nutrition across climate, agriculture, health, WASH and social security; and increase nutrition-sensitive spending in these sectors based on past best practices.^[1]
5. Put gender equality at the heart of nutrition programs by ensuring that at least 90% of food consumption is gender sensitive.
6. Build on UK nutrition policy expertise by partnering with governments and research institutes to support research in key areas such as preventing malnutrition, child wasting, young people’s nutrition and immunization coverage and proper nutrition.
7. Lead global accountability efforts by funding the World Nutrition Report to develop the Nutrition Accountability Framework, a key tool to ensure governments follow through on their N4G commitments.
8. Strengthen partnerships with local civil society organizations so that they can advocate for good nutrition in their governments. Add an advocacy role to FCDO’s nutrition programs and commit to funding the Scaling Up Nutrition Civil Society Network.

At the start of the N4G Conference, the new Labor government has an opportunity to increase its response to the global problem of malnutrition that exacerbates poverty and inequality. We urge the UK government to make its commitment against malnutrition as ambitious as possible to implement the French government’s program for the Summit, and to put nutrition at the heart of development. first international.

^[1] For the period 2019-22, the highest rates of nutrition consumption recorded in these sectors were 11% in health, 22% in agriculture, 14% in WASH and 16% in social services. The highest level of nutrition related to International Climate Finance was 7%.