04/12/2017 There has been a global recognition that social protection is a key strategy to tackle hunger and malnutrition. On 4-5 December 2017 a Technical Symposium on Nutrition-Sensitive Social Protection was organized by the Ministry of Food in collaboration with the FAO Meeting the Undernutrition Challenge (MUCH), UNICEF, WFP, IFPRI, and Save the Children in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

This meeting was the second series of national symposia focusing on nutrition-sensitive approaches and was attended by a total of 143 representatives from the Government, the UN, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), academia, and the private sector. It took stock of the best practices and lessons learned on social protection programmes to address food insecurity and malnutrition. It also provided recommendations on how Bangladesh social protection system can be more nutrition-sensitive and how to inform the development and implementation of sectoral and cross-sectoral policy options and investment plans on social protection. 

Meher Afroze Chumki, Honourable State Minister for Women and Children Affairs, was the chief guest of the symposium. David Westerling, Deputy Director of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Manfred Fernholz, Acting Head of Cooperation, Delegation of the European Union (EU) to Bangladesh, were present as the special guests, while Christa Räder, WFP Representative, Edouard Beigbeder, UNICEF Representative in Bangladesh, and David Doolan, FAO Representative ad interim in Bangladesh, took part in the meeting as the guests of honor. Md. Kaikobad Hossain, Secretary for Food chaired the inaugural session of the symposium.

In her speech, Ms Chumki underlined that acceleration of progress in nutrition would require integrated and wider sector efforts in promoting nutrition-sensitive approaches to enhancing nutrition specific interventions. The symposium was very timely and testified the Government’s commitment to supporting food security initiatives for the people of Bangladesh.

A keynote speech was delivered by Shamsul Alam, Member (Senior Secretary), General Economics Division (GED), Planning Commission. The importance of social protection measures centering on nutrition was addressed highlighting the critical role of nutrition in cognitive development of children. The policy-planning agenda of Bangladesh already addresses the importance of nutrition intake of children such as the Perspective Plan (2010-2021) and the 7th Five Year Plan, as well as the National Social Security Strategy. Various social protection schemes existing in Bangladesh are designed in response to the National Nutrition Policy 2015. The Government is also considering bringing up new schemes using nutrition sensitivity that would have an impact on reducing inter-generational poverty, risk and vulnerabilities.

Meanwhile, Mr Doolan pointed out that both social protection and nutrition would require inter-sectoral interventions by various stakeholders. He welcomed the symposium as the opportunity to enhance knowledge on nutrition-sensitive social protection in Bangladesh and to explore and build new partnerships to further improve food security and nutrition in Bangladesh by making social protection nutrition-sensitive.

To wrap up the symposium, Naoki Minamiguchi, Chief Technical Advisor of FAO MUCH highlighted various policy and programme options and suggested more explicit integration of nutrition-sensitive social protection in government’s work plans and field-level actions. He also noted that social protection was one of the key investment areas set out in the forthcoming Second Country Investment Plan (CIP) for Nutrition-sensitive Food Systems.

The FAO MUCH project, financially supported by USAID and EU, supports the Government and multi-stakeholders across food security and nutrition sectors in planning and designing nutrition-sensitive policy interventions and food-based approaches for addressing undernutrition challenges.