The group of high-level delegates from the relevant ministries of Bangladesh recently participated in the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2) on November 19-21, 2014 at the FAO Headquarter in Rome, Italy.

The delegation was leaded by Ms. Matia Chowdhury, Hon’ble Minister of Agriculture. She was accompanied by Mr. Qamrul Islam, Hon’ble Minister of Food, Mr. Hossain Md. Helal, PS to the Minister of Food, Mr. Md. Shahjalal, PS to the Hon’ble Minister of Agriculture, Ms. Roxana Quader, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and Ms. Sultana Afroz, Deputy Secretary, Economic Relations Division, Ministry of Finance. Mr. Shahdat Hossain, H.E. the ambassador and Dr. Mofizur Rahman, Economic Counselor, , Embassy of People’s Republic of Bangladesh in Rome, Italy also joined the Bangladesh team from Rome.

Bangladesh team heavily focused on a revised plan with the comprehensive approach to food and nutrition security policy, strengthening FSN framework and investment and improving the governance to support the revised policy, strategically based on the Country Investment Plan 2011 and FPMU Monitoring report 2014.

Bangladesh believes that food security and nutrition can be achieved most rapidly through a coordinated and sustained policy implementation process, mobilizing the efforts of the government, development partners and civil society. The monitoring system put in place is promoting an environment to inform policy makers on short and long term decisions on food and nutrition security. The common results framework is enabling a harmonization and avoiding duplication of monitoring efforts among sectors. Lessons from the FSN annual monitoring process serve to inform, review and analyze progress against goals, outcomes and outputs of the PoA and CIP. To this end, it integrates and coordinates actions for food security and nutrition, promotes strategic use of scarce resources, identifies policy and resource gaps and ultimately contributes to accountability and informed decision making.

Bangladeshi delegates returned with a promise to integrate and emphasize the strategy on nutrition into the existing policy and come up with an intensive and combined approach for the next five years, in order to achieve the goals of the Government of Bangladesh.

The development work of UN, specially the FAO, UNDP and WHO were highly praised by the Bangladesh team in the meeting. The team also assured to extend their assistance towards the upcoming FAO Project “Managing Under-nutrition Challenge (MUCH) and collaborate in order to attain the national objective together.         

Background

The Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2) has just been jointly organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) which took place at FAO Headquarters in Rome on 19-21 November 2014. The overall goal of ICN2 was to improve diets and raise levels of nutrition through policies that more effectively address today’s major nutrition challenges.

The ministerial conference meetings on nutrition have been jointly organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO), in cooperation with the High Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis (HLTF), IFAD, IFPRI, UNESCO, UNICEF, World Bank, WFP and the WTO, took place during the period at FAO Headquarter.

ICN2 will brought together senior national policymakers from agriculture, health and other relevant ministries and agencies, with leaders of United Nations agencies and other intergovernmental organizations and civil society, including non-governmental organizations, researchers, the private sector and consumers, as well as proposed a flexible policy framework to address today’s major nutrition challenges and identify priorities for enhanced international cooperation on nutrition.

The key objectives of the ICN2 were to:

• review progress made since the 1992 ICN including country-level achievements in scaling up nutrition through direct nutrition interventions and nutrition-enhancing policies and programmes;
• review relevant policies and institutions on agriculture, fisheries, health, trade, consumption and social protection to improve nutrition;
• strengthen institutional policy coherence and coordination to improve nutrition, and mobilize resources needed to improve nutrition;
• strengthen international, including inter-governmental cooperation, to enhance nutrition everywhere, especially in developing countries.

ICN2 was built on ongoing global political processes and initiatives to contribute to the post-2015 UN development agenda including identifying priority areas, nutrition development goals as well as the policies that are required to achieve, measure and account for them. The outcome of the ICN2 will contribute to the UN Secretary-General’s call for a high degree of policy coherence at global, regional, national and sub-national levels and a global partnership for development at all levels. The ICN2 will also enlarge on the Secretary-General’s call to leaders gathered at the Rio+20 Summit to take up the “Zero Hunger Challenge”