For the first time in 20 years, UNICEF’s flagship report examines the issue of children, food and nutrition, providing a fresh perspective on a rapidly evolving challenge.
This 2019 edition of The State of the World’s Children (SOWC) examines the issue of children, food and nutrition, providing a fresh perspective on a rapidly evolving challenge. Despite progress in the past two decades, one third of children under age 5 are malnourished – stunted, wasted or overweight – while two thirds are at risk of malnutrition and hidden hunger because of the poor quality of their diets. At the center of this challenge is a broken food system that fails to provide children with the diets they need to grow healthy. This report also provides new data and analyses of malnutrition in the 21st century and outlines recommendations to put children’s rights at the heart of food systems.
The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) is a member of CGIAR, a global research partnership for a food-secure future. CGIAR science is dedicated to reducing poverty and enhancing food and nutrition security in developing countries while also protecting the world’s natural resources and ecosystem services. ILRI’s conducts research on efficient, safe and sustainable uses of livestock—ensuring better lives through livestock.
ILRI fully supports the United Nations’ ‘Decade of Action on Nutrition’. In particular, the institute will continue to research the role of livestock production systems and animal-source foods (milk, meat and eggs) in healthy and sustainable diets in low- and middle-income countries. Over 800 million people are food insecure, with the number increasing annually. There are more than 150 million children under 5 years of age with stunted growth and 250 million not reaching their developmental potential. Animal-source foods can alleviate both stunted growth and development by providing highly bioavailable nutrients in the diets of vulnerable populations. In low-resource communities, however, these foods are often not available or accessible. ILRI will continue to investigate pathways and nutrition-sensitive interventions that increase sustainable animal-source food production and market access.
For further information, we welcome you to read the full commitment here.
On Thursday, 10 October from 2-3pm (BST), IIED will host a Twitter chat to stimulate dialogue and debate around healthy diets and the need to transform our food systems to tackle the worsening nutrition crisis. In order to kickstart the conversation, IIED will tweet out a series of key questions and invite responses. The chat questions will be tweeted from IIED's Twitter account, @IIED.
The world is producing more food than ever before, yet the current food system is unequal. More than 820 million people – one out of every nine – still suffer from chronic food deprivation, while at the same time obesity is on the rise among children and adults, particularly among marginalised groups.
Urban areas are facing increasing food insecurity and malnutrition and unhealthy diets have become a leading risk factor for disease and death worldwide. Getting food on the table in cities is the theme of the next edition of Environment & Urbanization, that will be launched on World Food Day on 16 October.
Food systems must shift from simply producing food to providing sustainable and healthy diets for all and addressing all parts of the food system. IIED has worked with Hivos and others through the Sustainable Diets for All programme to document the problems and find solutions for improving access to sustainable, affordable, diverse and nutritious foods for all.
This year, World Food Day will promote healthy diets, and IIED and Hivos will host a ‘Healthy Diets Week’ between 14 and 18 October to highlight the contribution of sustainable diets to transforming local and national food systems.
More information available here
Uppsala Health Summit is a recurring international policy arena for dialogue on challenges for health and healthcare, and how we can overcome them. In 2019, the discussion will be on Healthy Urban Childhoods and held in the Uppsala Castle in Sweden. Initiators are Uppsala University, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala County Council, Uppsala City Council and World Class Uppsala.
For more information, visit their website.
Duty Station: Kayes, Mali
Duration: 20 months (possibility of 3 months renewal depending on funding)
Good nutrition serves as a catalyst for advancement in health, education, employment, empowerment, and the productive capacity of women and men. It can lay the foundation for peaceful, secure, and stable societies. However, several forms of malnutrition (e.g. stunting, wasting, anemia, and obesity) can currently be found in the same country, the same community, the same household, and even the same person—a testament to the complexity of the problem.
For these reasons and more, CARE pledges its support to the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition.
As governments and stakeholders increasingly commit to the Nutrition Decade, and new action networks are formed, CARE will seek pathways for collaboration to support common goals. CARE will also continue to advocate for just and sustainable food and water systems to provide healthy and nutritious diets, engaging governments, the private sector, international bodies, and partners, including in non-traditional spaces. The most recent example of this was CARE’s work alongside CCAFS to raise the ambition in climate action related to food systems for improved nutrition at the UNFCCC (Bonn, June 2019).
With only 5 years left to achieve the World Health Assembly targets to improve maternal, infant, and young child nutrition, and 10 years to reach the Sustainable Development Goals, this mid-way point of the United Nations Decade of Action on Nutrition reminds us that now is the moment to do more.
23 September 2019
UN HQ, New York (USA)
Climate change is the defining issue of our time and now is the defining moment to do something about it. There is still time to tackle climate change, but it will require an unprecedented effort from all sectors of society.
To boost ambition and accelerate actions to implement the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, UN Secretary-General António Guterres will host the 2019 Climate Summit on 23 September to meet the climate challenge. The Summit will showcase a leap in collective national political ambition and it will demonstrate massive movements in the real economy in support of the agenda. Together, these developments will send strong market and political signals and inject momentum in the “race to the top” among countries, companies, cities and civil society that is needed to achieve the objectives of the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals.
17-30 September 2019
New York City, US
The 74th session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA 74) will open on 17 September 2019. The first day of the high-level General Debate will be Tuesday, 24 September 2019.
During the week of the debate, several other high-level events also will convene (as of 27 November 2018):
- On Monday, 23 September, the UN Secretary-General will convene a Climate Summit, and the UNGA will hold a one-day high-level meeting on Universal Health Coverage (UHC);
- On Tuesday, 24 September, following the opening of the 74th General Debate, the UNGA will convene a meeting of the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF), which will take place on the afternoon of 24 September and all day on 25 September (SDG Summit);
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 third issue for 2019 includes:
- UNN analytics anchor discussions on nutrition investment in Mali
- Bringing nutrition beyond Rome
- The Philippines: The land of many islands and nutrition achievements
- Towards Voluntary Guidelines for Food systems and Nutrition
- UN nutrition lobbying starts to pay off in Liberia
- Improving diets for human and planetary health
- Publications and a calendar of nutrition related events
Sign up for UNSCN E-Alerts and E-Newsletters here.
The 10th Nutritional & Health-related Environmental Studies Newsletter features the following articles.
Meeting & News
- Scientists converge in Kingston, Jamaica to learn how to assess gut dysfunction using a stable isotope technique
- Project meetings on assessing vitamin A body pools
- Bringing stable isotope techniques closer to the people through e-learning platforms
- Nuclear Techniques for Better Nutrition
- Student’s visit from Wageningen University and University of Vienna
- Double Burden of Malnutrition - Symposium Follow-Up Report
- Results of FTIR use and ownership survey 2018
New publications
- Measuring growth and medium- and longer-term outcomes in malnourished children
- Challenges and opportunities to tackle the rising prevalence of diet-related non-communicable diseases in Africa
- IAEA Human Health Series No. 35
Success stories
- Dispatch from the warm heart of Africa: How nuclear techniques are contributing to understanding the double burden of malnutrition in Malawi
- A day in the life of an IAEA nutrition expert
NAHRES Special
- Launch of the UNSCN Nutrition 44 - Food environments: Where people meet the food system
You can download you copy here.
25-30 August 2019, Tele2 Arena, Stockholm (Sweden)
World Water Week is the annual focal point for the globe’s water issues. It is organized by SIWI. In 2019, World Water Week will address the theme “Water for society – Including all ”.
The Week provides a unique forum for the exchange of views, experiences and practices between the scientific, business, policy and civic communities. It focuses on new thinking and positive action toward water-related challenges and their impact on the world’s environment, health, climate, economic and poverty reduction agendas by:
- Linking scientific understanding with policy and decision-making to develop concrete solutions to water, environment and development challenges
- Fostering proactive partnerships and alliances between individuals and organisations from different fields of expertise
- Highlighting ground-breaking research, best practices and innovative policy work by stakeholders and experts around the world and from multiple disciplines
- Reviewing the implementation of actions, commitments and decisions in international processes and by different stakeholders in response to the challenge
- Awarding outstanding achievements
In 2018, over 3,300 individuals and around 380 convening organizations from 135 countries participated in the Week.
In many countries, the link between rural and urban areas is an increasingly important area of focus for sustainable development. There is also general agreement that any development of urban, peri-urban and rural areas should be “integrated”. The ten Guiding Principles and the Framework for Action outlining eleven areas of action are based on the premise that urban and rural areas should not be treated as separate entities when developing plans, policies and strategies. Rather, the aim is to harness the potential that their combined synergy generates.
UN-Habitat, in collaboration with the Food for Agriculture Organization (FAO) and other partners, organized a side event during the first UN-Habitat assembly titled “Strengthening urban-rural linkages to reduce spatial inequalities and poverty by leveraging sustainable food systems actions”.
The event brought together actors and partners from organizations working in both urban and rural sectors but also working on themes such as food, climate change, biodiversity, urban and territorial planning, economic development and finance. The event was attended by representatives of national governments, sub-national governments, civil society and other international organizations.
Following the side event at the closing plenary of the UN Habitat Assembly, Member States adopted a resolution on “Enhancing urban-rural linkages for sustainable urbanization and human settlements”, calling for new mechanisms to take into account urban-rural linkages, awareness raising and sharing of good practices, including addressing migration from rural to urban areas and providing a report on progress in four years at the next UN-Habitat Assembly.
Please find here the complete report of the side event.
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