At the Millennium Development Summit held in September 2000, the member States of the United Nations reaffirmed their priority commitment to fight against poverty and for sustained development.[1] Taking forward the recommendations of the various world conferences held during the previous decade, eight fundamental development goals[2] were discussed and approved (see box), while a framework was established for monitoring progress towards their achievement (World Bank Group, 2000).
These goals reflect a present-day consensus on the priority problems of development and on the efforts to be agreed, both individually for each country and globally for the world community as a whole, to deal with these problems effectively. Deadlines, together with specific results to be achieved to allow substantial progress to be made, were accordingly drawn up; at the same time, a number of indicators were suggested whereby results could be assessed in a harmonized way.
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Millennium Development Goals 1 - Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger |
The first of these fundamental goals is a restatement of the intermediate goal adopted in 1996 by the World Food Summit (WFS), namely ‘halving the number of undernourished people worldwide by 2015 ‘. In more general terms, this summit placed world food security in a broad context; its action plan, providing for 27 goals, covered most of the sectors contributing towards food security at all levels[3] (FAO, 1997).
The WFS also confirmed, while supplementing them, the recommendations of the International Conference on Nutrition (ICN) which was held in 1992 under the aegis of FAO and WHO. It concluded with the adoption of a world declaration and an action plan to combat the different forms of malnutrition in the world more effectively (FAO & WHO, 1992a, b). Both the Millennium Summit and the WFS thus emphasised the importance of food security and the improvement of nutrition, in conjunction with the reduction of poverty, for international development.
A common characteristic of these international summits and conferences is the recognition of the need to monitor progress in achieving the goals set and therefore to have a list of key indicators available; countries should also be capable of selecting indicators suited to each situation and to different uses. More specifically, the WFS committed governments to establish ‘mechanisms to collect information on the nutritional status of all members of communities, especially the poor, women, children and members of vulnerable and disadvantaged groups, to monitor and improve their household food security’ (FAO, 1996).
In 2002, the declaration of the ‘World Food Summit: Five Years Later’ reaffirmed this need: ‘We call upon the concerned development partners to exert all necessary efforts to achieve the international development goals of the Millennium Declaration, particularly, those related to halving poverty and hunger by 2015, to improve and strengthen the indicators necessary for measuring progress and to monitor progress within their mandate; and to renew and strengthen the commitment to national and international systems in place to assess food security.’ It again highlighted ‘... the need for attention to nutritional issues as an integral part of addressing food security’ (FAO, 2002).
The goals of the Millennium Summit also draw attention to the fact that a broad set of conditions governs development and that there is no point in improving matters in isolation if a sustainable result is sought. It is therefore vital, while paying special attention to the progression of specific food and nutrition indicators, to have simultaneously an overall view of trends of poverty and development indicators, since most of the policies or programmes introduced by the countries relate to many sectors.
Implementing nutrition policies or action plans requires information at the following levels: on problems and their causes in order to identify priorities; on possible programmatic options; and finally on monitoring actions and their impact. To do this, relevant instruments need to be available at each stage suitable for describing the situation, for establishing progress towards goals, and for assessing results obtained in relation to a baseline or reference situation. These instruments are indicators, in other words detailed descriptions, whether or not numerical, which are drawn up from the variables (or combinations of variables) collected in conjunction with measurements, observations or questionnaires and which ought, ideally, to set out in summary form the information being sought, while being easily understood, and interpreted similarly by all users.
At international level, a major work has been accomplished since the WFS for defining, developing and analysing indicators in various sectors, notably by the Committee on World Food Security (CFS, 2001a & b) and by the Inter-Agency Working Group on Food Insecurity and Vulnerability Information and Mapping Systems (FIVIMS, 2002) on all issues relating to the monitoring of food security and the global nutrition situation.
Many factors can contribute towards improving the nutrition situation. Some can be modified by interventions, others not. Yet all these factors must be identified and monitored and their respective roles taken into consideration. As our knowledge of malnutrition - and public health problems linked to the global food situation - improves, the number of indicators available to enable us to understand this complexity inexorably increases; there are several hundreds of them, if all sectors with a direct or indirect link with the nutrition situation of populations are included. We are therefore faced with a problem of identifying and choosing relevant indicators.
A number of indicators are regularly used within each major sector, but they are scattered among a large number of documents. This information must be rapidly accessible to the inter-sectoral groups responsible for implementing and monitoring national policies. The indicators which appear to be the most widely used or the most relevant for each sector have therefore been brought together in this guide. Moreover, innovative indicators, which are still not commonly used, are also presented.
The main problem is to make a judicious choice among these to obtain the necessary information at a reasonable cost. It is difficult to provide a universal formula, insofar as the choice depends above all on the nutritional goals set in accordance with each country’s situation and each user’s needs. At the outset, a broad list of indicators, such as that presented in Chapter 3, is therefore inevitable. Attention will be drawn to some general rules for selection and use in Chapter 2. The nature and qualities of the indicators need to be examined, some of which are dependent on the conditions of their production and analysis. Then account needs to be taken of where they stand within the conceptual framework used for defining the strategies envisaged. As a matter of fact, this conceptual framework, which is necessary for drawing policies and programmes, will be the basis for the choice of indicators, in accordance with the existing situation and declared priorities.
Complementing existing instruments, this guide therefore sets out to contribute towards achieving and monitoring the World Food Summit and the Millennium Development Goals at country level for all issues relating to nutrition of populations.
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What is an indicator? As the word suggests, an indicator gives an indication, in other words it tries to reflect a given situation or an underlying reality which is difficult to qualify directly, and usually to give an order of magnitude. For example, the average yield of a specific crop in tonnes per hectare can give an idea of the intensity of agricultural labour productivity in the region under consideration. Quantitative or qualitative variables may be involved, depending on the nature of the phenomena being described; in the above example, a qualitative indicator concerning the nature of the soil, farming methods or the intensity of work as perceived by growers may be considered in order to provide useful information to complement that provided by the quantitative indicator of yield. In general, the more complex the phenomenon to be reflected, the greater the need for a range of indicators; for example, a group’s health status cannot be assessed from a single indicator. Moreover, an indicator may often have a limited link with the phenomenon to be described; the indicator represents a proxy of what is to be measured. In this case, it will be used less to measure the phenomenon itself than to reflect variations, which will in turn be linked to variations in the hard-to-grasp phenomenon; for example, changes in mortality rates, where these are high, give a good idea of trends in the health status of the group in question. This shows that there is a need to use of a range of indicators, and to constantly define new ones, to be used both alone and in combination, in order to refine the interpretation. Because a country’s per capita income is insufficient to reflect its development level, the United Nations have suggested a "human development index", taking into account life expectancy, educational achievement and purchasing power of the population. As a matter of fact, where there is the same level of wealth, the level of actual development may vary. With a view to further refining this concept, economists from the United Nations Development Programme recently added a measurement of access to essential public services, thereby introducing a new indicator known as the "human poverty index". Quantitative indicators (crude variables or numeric indices calculated from these) are used to provide a standardized description of situations and how they evolve; sometimes an indicator is constructed from a continuous variable dichotomized (yes/no) or transformed into classes, favoring relative values (ranks) rather than absolute ones. Certain qualitative indicators are sometimes expressed as proportions (e.g. percentages) in order to convey an order of magnitude of the phenomenon under observation or of trends. Certain indicators are directly applicable to elementary units (individuals, households, houses, etc.), so that a global indicator may therefore be constructed which applies to all these units (average, percentage of units below a certain cut-off value, etc.); it is this type of indicator which is the most widely used to monitor situations among populations. An indicator does not reduce to the data on which it is based; it generally comprises elements (a cut-off value, a frame of reference, a mode of expression, etc.) which allow a relatively universal appreciation of the information it supplies and also facilitate comparison in time and space. The use of such indicators has been extensively described in the literature in the various sectors concerned. The information associated with an indicator may thus go beyond simply measuring phenomena, which is why selection, analysis and interpretation must, as far as possible, be performed by a specialist in the field concerned. Data on the prevalence of a given index of undernutrition will, for example, allow a nutritionist to assess undernutrition in terms of its severity at public health level or in terms of possible consequences on development in general, taking into account consequences in terms of health, productivity, educational achievement or social dynamism. Hence the need for an analysis within inter-sectoral groups, when numerous indicators are considered. |
| [1] see http://millenniumindicators.un.org/unsd/mi/mi_goals.asp [2] see http://millenniumindicators.un.org/unsd/mi/mi_goals.asp [3] According to the Rome Declaration, food security exists ‘when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.’ Food security may be analyzed at all levels: world, national, regional or, further, at household and individual level.. |
