Country commitments to the Nutrition Decade are included in an online repository and being tracked on regular basis by country self-assessments. We welcome you to follow progress from BrazilEcuador and Italy.

Additional countries are currently developing their commitments with guidance from the recently released FAO/WHO resource guide Strengthening Nutrition Action.

In an effort to present nutrition related news at the global and country level, UNSCN and the UNN Secretariats are teaming up to produce the first comprehensive overview of recent developments supported and/or coordinated by the UN system.

The December 2018 edition includes:

  • Outcomes of the November 2018 meeting of the United Nations System Standing Committee on Nutrition (UNSCN) and the UN Network (UNN) in Rome, Italy
  • News about the UNICEF‘s Food Systems for Children Consultation
  • Awareness raising efforts at the IFPRI-FAO event Accelerating the end of hunger and malnutrition
  • The latest achievements under the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition (2016-2025)
  • Nutrition capacity assessment efforts in Chad
  • Multi-stakeholder nutrition mapping in Niger

PUBLICATIONS and a CALENDAR OF NUTRITION RELATED EVENTS

You can access you copy here. Photo credits @IFAD/DavidRose

Tuesday, December 11, 2018, 3:30 - 5:00 pm EST hosted by the Center For Strategic & International Studies

 For 25 years, the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte has been an unsung hero in the fight against food insecurity. As Dr. M. Jahi Chappell put it, “The course to universal food security will never run smooth[ly], but steps forward have and can be made. Belo Horizonte has walked a bit farther down the path than most.” Annually, the municipal government’s Under-Secretariat of Food and Nutritional Security spends upwards of $27 million running affordable “Popular Restaurants” that serve 14,000 meals per day; supporting retail “Food at Low Cost” outlets that annually move 50 million kilograms of produce; and making lunch from scratch for 150,000 schoolchildren. In addition, the government procures nearly all the produce required for these programs from small- and medium- sized family farms in the peri-urban area.

Please join us for a keynote address from Belo Horizonte’s Food and Nutrition Secretary, Ms. Maíra Colares, as we examine the promise, challenges, and determinants of durable municipal governance in food security policy. The keynote will be preceded by a special video message from Olivier de Schutter, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, and followed by a panel discussion with Secretary Colares and Chris Shepherd-Pratt from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Drawing on the experiences of Belo Horizonte, the panel will explore a number of issues:

  • What special role can municipal governments play in food security, compared to regional, national, and international governments?
  • What enables government institutions to maintain their commitments to food security over the long-term?
  • How can U.S. development policymakers best support local governance?

To register for the event or to join the live-webcast, visit the webpage for the event. You can also participate in the conversation using #CSISLive and #FoodSecurity

A safe and healthy diet contributes to an optimal state of health and protects against all forms of malnutrition. It also reduces the risk of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) and promotes a strong immune system that protects against infection. Every human being has a fundamental human right to adequate food and nutrition. However, unhealthy diet is one of the top risk factors for the global burden of disease and, together with maternal and child malnutrition, accounts for about one quarter of global deaths.

Meanwhile, today’s food systems struggle to provide everyone with the safe and sustainably produced food needed to ensure healthy diets. Ensuring a healthy diet now and into the future, therefore, demands that we focus on the most vulnerable populations, on promoting a healthy and diverse diet and on changing to sustainable food production systems.

This information sheet shows that a healthy diet which is sustainably produced and consumed is a “win-win” for people’s health and planetary health. In addition, the information sheet is developed using an equity/gender lens.

Key facts and recommendations for healthy eating are summarized and a useful list of concrete actions are proposed for governments to promote healthy and sustainable diets. Links to WHO fact sheets on related topics are provided.

10–13 December 2018, IAEA Headquarters, Vienna (Austria)

The double burden of malnutrition (DBM) is characterized by the coexistence of undernutrition (stunting, wasting, vitamin and mineral deficiency) along with overweight, obesity or diet-related NCDs, within individuals, households and populations, and across the life-course. The developmental and economic impacts of this double burden are serious and lasting, with low and middle income countries bearing the greatest burden. The DBM is united by shared drivers and solutions and therefore calls for integrated nutrition action. 

The purpose of the symposium is to strengthen the understanding of how to address the DBM by sharing recent research findings and country experience with implementing relevant policies and programme interventions.

Objectives

The objective is to provide a forum for estimating and further exploring the magnitude of the DBM, sharing evidence on biological pathways through which early nutrition influences overweight, obesity and NCDs, identifying knowledge gaps and research needs, reviewing efforts that have been undertaken so far to create nutrition enabling environments and discussing considerations for the design and contextualisation of relevant double-duty actions and policies. Finally, the symposium will identify considerations for policies and action plans to support Member States in achieving their defined nutrition commitments within the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition and SDG2.

Topics

The symposium will cover five thematic areas:

  • Epidemiology - Prevalence, causes and consequences of the DBM.
  • Biology - Biological mechanisms contributing to the DBM.
  • Assessment - How to assess the DBM in individuals and populations.
  • Interventions - From biology to interventions targeting the DBM.
  • Policy implications - From biology to policies addressing the DBM.

Key Deadlines

  • 27 May 2018: Online submission of abstracts (INDICO).
    Submission of participation and abstract forms and grant applications (forms A, B, C).
  • 30 June 2018: Notification of acceptance of abstracts.

Abstracts must be submitted in electronic format through the online submission system INDICO available at the symposium web page.

More information on the symposium website
Detailed information on administrative procedures including participation and registration, abstract submission is provided on the symposium web site: 
https://www.iaea.org/events/understanding-the-double-burden-of-malnutrition-symposium-2018

There is no registration fee to attend this symposium.

Sight and Life Magazine on the Double Burden of Malnutrition now available

Currently, 38 million children are obese worldwide, compared with 151 million children stunted, and childhood obesity is increasing in every region of the world. Increasingly these conditions occur at the same time in the same country, household, and even in the same individual. The latest edition of the Sight and Life magazine focuses on Double Burden of Malnutrition and the challenges and opportunities the global community now faces in addressing all forms of malnutrition. Each article in this issue is inspiring and thought-provoking and we very much hope that it will stimulate new ways of thinking that pave the way for meaningful and lasting change.

To download and share the full report visit the Sight and Life website

Deadline: 28 February 2019

FAO and the Government of Switzerland are calling on individuals, private companies or institutions to submit nominations for the International Innovation Award for Sustainable Food and Agriculture by 28 February 2019.

There are two categories:

  • Award for Digitalization and Innovation for Sustainable Food Systems (USD 40 000) -Innovations that impact more than one level of the supply chain and strengthen the link between farmers and consumers.
  • Award for Innovations that empower youth in agriculture and food systems (USD 20 000) - Innovations that empower youth (under 35) in agriculture and food systems.

Download the nomination form, terms and conditions and explain how your innovation is contributing to the global effort to reach Zero Hunger, and why not add its support to the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition.

For further information, please write to: Innovation-Award@fao.org

 

Deadline: 13 December 2018

The Sustainable Food Systems Programme of the UN One Planet Network has launched the online consultation Towards a common understanding of Sustainable Food Systems. This work is in support of the development of a publication on Key Approaches, Concepts and Terms in Relation to Sustainable Food Systems to help reach a common understanding of the challenges faced in the transformation of our food systems. Through this consultation we invite you to share your comments on the V 1.0 draft of the publication to help ensure that key concepts and principal components of a sustainable food systems approach are adequately reflected.

The discussion is also available in French and Spanish on the FSN Forum website and we welcome comments in any of the six UN-languages.

To take part, share your comments on the  FSN Forum website or send them to fsn-moderator@fao.org by 13 December 2018.

We look forward to receiving your inputs and please do not hesitate to extend this invitation to your friends and colleagues.

3 December 2018, 9.00-10.30 CET at IFAD HQ – Oval Room and via webcast

The event will present the Nutrition-sensitive value chains: A guide for project design, a practical guide that describes a step-by-step approach for designing NSVC projects, drawing on the latest research and field-tested approaches in Indonesia and Nigeria. The event will also highlight the collection of materials IFAD has produced to support development of NSVC projects, including a technical Research Paper describing the underlying framework and practitioner-friendly summaries of the results of applying the approach in Indonesia and Nigeria.  

The guide's authors, Isabel de la Peña (Nutrition and Value Chain Specialist, IFAD-ECG Consultant) and James Garrett (Senior Research Fellow, Bioversity International) will present key features of the guide and the approach. IFAD colleagues who participated in the process of developing the guide will also describe their experiences. 

The full set of publications can be accessed through the links below: 

o   Nutrition-sensitive value chains: A guide for project design Volume I and Volume II

o   IFAD Research paper: Nutrition-sensitive value chain from a smallholder perspective: A framework for project design

o   Nutrition-sensitive value chains – Country Brochures for Nigeria and Indonesia

 

 

Open until 7 January 2019.

During its 45th Plenary Session (15-20 October 2018), the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) requested its High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) to produce a short report (around 20 pages, approximately 20 000 words) entitled “Food Security and Nutrition: Building a global narrative towards 2030” to be presented by the first semester 2020.

 To implement this CFS request, the HLPE is launching an open e-consultation to seek views and comments on the following scope and building blocks of the report, outlined below. To participate, please visit the dedicated HLPE e-consultation website: http://www.fao.org/fsnforum/cfs-hlpe/discussions/global_FSN_narrative

 Comments can be submitted online, by mail to FSN-moderator@fao.org, or directly to the HLPE Secretariat at cfs-hlpe@fao.org.

The e-Consultation will be running until 7 January 2019

For more information visit the HLPE website