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More than $4 bln pledged at London summit to tackle child malnutrition

by Astrid Zweynert | azweynert | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Saturday, 8 June 2013 18:15 GMT

Action Against Hunger International (ACF) workers distribute guinea pigs to community members as part of a food security program in Karete February 19, 2013. REUTERS/Jana Asenbrennerova

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New global compact signed by governments, businesses and civil society to tackle malnutrition

(Updated with details of rally, quotes)

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Governments, businesses and civil society committed more  than $4 billion at a Nutrition for Growth summit on Saturday to help end global malnutrition among the world’s poorest children and also agreed new targets for improving nutrition.

A global nutrition for growth compact signed at the summit seeks to ensure at least 500 million pregnant women and children benefit from effective nutrition programmes, to prevent stunted growth in at least 20 million children and save at least 1.7 million lives by reducing stunting, increasing breastfeeding and treating severe acute malnutrition.

British Prime Minister David Cameron called for fresh approaches to help eliminate malnutrition and hunger among the world’s poorest nations.

“We will never beat hunger just by spending more money or getting developed nations and philanthropists to somehow ‘do development’ to the developing world, “ Cameron said in his address to the London summit, hosted by the British and Brazilian governments and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation.

“It has to be about  doing things differently," said Cameron. "Different in terms of business. Different in terms of science. And different in terms of government.”

Malnutrition is the underlying cause of death for at least 3.1 million children a year, accounting for 45 percent of all deaths among children under the age of five and stunting growth among a further 165 million, according to research. The economic costs associated with malnutrition are vast, estimated to total 5 percent of global output, or $3.5 trillion.

As donors, charities and officials gathered for the event, up to 45,000 people rallied in London demanding global leaders take specific steps to tackle hunger when they meet in Northern Ireland for the G8 summit of rich industrialised countries later this month.

TOP PRIORITY

The United Nation’s childrens fund (UNICEF) welcomed the commitment to make nutrition a top political and socio-economic priority for both donors and countries affected by malnutrition and capitalise on scientific knowledge and innovation to improve nutrition.

“For children who face the unnecessary threat of stunting – something that not only deprives them of physical good health but dramatically weakens their potential to learn, to earn a decent income and to contribute to the prosperity and growth of their communities – today’s gathering in London underlined a global determination to meet that threat,” UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake said in a statement.  

UNICEF has said it wants to focus global efforts for now on 20 countries - mostly in Africa and Asia - which are home to 70 percent of the world's stunted children. The cost of tackling poor nutrition in these countries is estimated to be about $7 billion a year.

The Enough Food For Everyone IF campaign, a coalition of British aid agencies, said the agreement had put the “scandal of undernutrition” firmly on the map.

“We now need to ensure that donors stump up the cash as quickly as possible, hungry children can’t wait,” spokesman David Bull said.

WHAT THE NEW COMPACT MEANS

Key spects of the agreement include:

• New commitments of up to $4.15 billion to tackle undernutrition up to 2020, $2.9 billion of which is core funding with the remainder secured through matched funding

• An estimated $19 billion committed for improved nutrition outcomes from investments between 2013 and 2020

• Commitments from 14 governments to increase domestic resources invested in scaling up national nutrition plans

• Pledges from 22 businesses to improve the nutrition of over 927,000 members of their workforces in more than 80 countries

José Graziano da Silva, director-general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO),  said the cost of inaction was too high.

"Malnutrition kills millions every year, and damages billions of lives,” Graziano da Silva said in a statement. “It costs up to 5 percent of global GDP (economic output) in foregone output and health costs." 

Experts say that if action is sped up, malnutrition could be ended in a generation.

Richard Jolly, a leading development economist based at the International Institute for Development Studies, said despite years of collective inaction to tackle the problem, change was possible, even rapidly, if proven methods to tackle malnutrition were delivered at a large enough scale.

“Now is the time to invest and invest significantly. The benefits from nutrition for development are substantial. Inaction involves both high costs and a terrible waste of human potential for generations,“ Jolly wrote.

China, for example, reduced rates of child stunting by up to half between 1992 and 1998, mostly by actions linked to reducing rural poverty, said Jolly. Other countries like Indonesia, Tanzania and Peru have shown that focused and determined action can produce measurable results within less than a decade, he added.

(Additional reporting by Maria Golovnina in London)

 

 

 

 



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