Invitation to comment on the revised draft of the political outcome document of the ICN2
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO), in cooperation with IFAD, IFPRI, UNESCO, UNICEF, World Bank, WTO, WFP and the High Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis (HLTF), are jointly organizing the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2), a high-level conference at FAO Headquarters, Rome, from 19 to 21 November 2014. More information is available at: www.fao.org/ICN2.
Two documents are expected to come out of the ICN2 - a political outcome document and a framework of action for its implementation.
On the basis of the discussions at the meetings of the ICN2 Joint Working Group (JWG) and of the comments received on the zero draft political outcome document through the public online consultation, a new shorter, more concise and more coherent Draft of the Rome Declaration on Nutrition has been prepared by the Co-Chairs of the JWG with the assistance of the joint Secretariats of FAO and WHO and is available in the six UN languages.
We now invite you to provide your comments on the new draft version of the document, focusing on the set of questions formulated below and also available in a template form.
This new open consultation, which will start on May 14th 2014 and end on May 28th 2014, is an opportunity to receive inputs from different stakeholders. These contributions will be then compiled by the Joint ICN2 Secretariat and transmitted to the JWG formal meeting on June 13th 2014.
We kindly thank you in advance for providing your comments and for sharing your knowledge and experiences with us.
We look forward to receiving your contributions.
FAO/WHO Joint Secretariat
Questions:
- General comments on the Draft of the Rome Declaration on Nutrition.
- Specific comments on the paragraphs related to the multiple threats that malnutrition poses to sustainable development (paragraphs 4-10).
- Specific comments on the vision for global action to end all forms of malnutrition (paragraphs 11-12).
- Specific comments in the appropriate fields relating to these commitments (paragraph 13):
Commitment a): eradicate hunger and all forms of malnutrition, particularly to eliminate stunting, wasting and overweight in children under 5 and anemia in women; eliminating undernourishment and reversing rising trends in obesity;
Commitment b): reshape food systems through coherent implementation of public policies and investment plans throughout food value chains to serve the health and nutrition needs of the growing world population by providing access to safe, nutritious and healthy foods in a sustainable and resilient way;
Commitment c): take leadership to shape and manage food systems and improve nutrition by strengthening institutional capacity, ensuring adequate resourcing and coordinating effectively across sectors;
Commitment d): encourage and facilitate contributions by all stakeholders in society and promote collaboration within and across countries, including North-South, South-South and triangular cooperation;
Commitment e): enhance people’s nutrition, including people with special needs, through policies and initiatives for healthy diets throughout the life course, starting from the early stages of life, before and during pregnancy, promoting and supporting adequate breast feeding and appropriate complementary feeding, healthy eating by families, and at school during childhood;
Commitment f): adopt and implement a Framework for Action that should be used to monitor progress in achieving targets and fulfilling commitments;
Commitment g): integrate the objectives of the Framework for Action into the post-2015 development agenda including a possible global goal on food security and nutrition.
5. We would also appreciate your vision on policies, programmes and investment that might help translate such commitments into action.
- أقرأ 68 المساهمات
WFO Comments to the “Draft of the Rome Declaration on Nutrition”
The World Farmers’ Organisation, WFO, strongly supports the Second International Conference on Nutrition and the importance of a “Rome Declaration on Nutrition”. As a general comment, WFO wants to highlight the importance of explicitly referring to farmers, the main food producers and those responsible for high-quality food production, as key stakeholders to achieve better nutrition standards.
Nutrition is certainly a major challenge to development, and all stakeholders, including farmers, civil society, private sector, and Governments have to join forces and make an extra effort to raise awareness on the importance of nutrition all over the world. Involving farmers in this process is the key for success. Farmers do not simply produce food, but they are the ones who know what to produce, how to produce and when to produce. Farmers have the knowledge and expertise to produce high-quality food which is the basic element to achieve better nutrition goals.
Please find attached the detailed comments to the "Draft of the Rome Declaration on Nutrition".
We commend the Joint Working Group for streamlining and improving the body of the text. We make some suggested wording changes to the text below, clearly identifiable through “track changes”. We also make some specific comments in comments “boxes”. These suggestions:
- Improve the clarity of the text
- Link the document more fully to existing internationally agreed global initiatives and actions relevant to nutrition
- Add in one further commitment (on advancing the development of data systems and metrics) and an additional “call” (for more official development assistance)
- Call on the Joint Working Group to specify the timeframe for the Framework for Action (we propose 2015-2025) and the Decade of Action on Nutrition
- Recommend that, for the purpose of monitoring and accountability, the ICN political outcomes document is ratified / adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2015 and that progress towards implementation of the political outcomes document on nutrition is reviewed by the UN General Assembly once every five years (ie in 2020 and 2025).
We remain disappointed that the commitments are insufficiently specific for the purposes of monitoring and accountability. But we recognise the importance of a Framework for Action, which we call on the JWG to draft and complete ready for adoption at the November meeting along with the Political Outcomes document. We recommend the Framework builds on the commitments made in the Outcomes Document, and is concise, focused and actionable.
[See specific comments in the attachment, Ed.]
As a partner in the Multi-Stakeholder Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock, the International Meat Secretariat (IMS) is pleased to participate in the discussion on the Draft of the Rome Declaration on Nutrition. The IMS represents beef, sheep and pork meat producers around the world and its Committees, including the Human Nutrition and Health Committee and the Sustainability Committee contribute to the development of best practices around the sustainable production and consumption of our products as part of a healthy diet. Our members represent countries that together account for more than 75% of global red meat production and include key global producers of red meat, including Australia and Brazil and as such, play a critical role in contributing to global food and nutrition security.
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General comments on the Draft of the Rome Declaration on Nutrition.
We welcome the inclusive approach adopted in the Declaration, in particular, recognition of the need to include all stakeholders, including the private sector, to ensure food and nutrition security is achieved. The agricultural industries operate from paddock to plate and consequently, have the potential to make a meaningful contribution to food and nutrition security by helping to identify opportunities and innovations and facilitating their implementation as part of a multi-stakeholder partnership.
[See specific comments in the attachment, Ed.]
Thank you for the opportunity to provide feedback. Attached is the template with our comments.
We at the Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity Programme of the WHO/Regional Office for Europe received the attached contribution from Prof. Mirosław Jarosz, National Food and Nutrition Institute, Warsaw, Poland.
Paola Bennati
Second Draft of the Rome Declaration on Nutrition
Concern Worldwide, Helen Keller International and the SUN Civil Society Network welcome the opportunity to feedback on the latest iteration of the Rome Declaration. Progress has been made which is welcome, but many significant issues remain to be addressed. We offer the below as organisations committed to realising the best outcome and potential from ICN2 and hope that it proves helpful in finalising the Rome Declaration.
General comments
- In addition to restricting the attainment of human potential and impacts on physical and cognitive development, as the Cost of Hunger Study in Africa1 highlighted, undernutrition can cost a country as much as 16.5 percent of its GDP. Outlining the economic consequences of undernutrition is important and further emphasises the urgency and imperative to act. This omission has still not been rectified in the latest iteration of the Rome Declaration.
- Reference to the World Health Assembly targets is still lacking. Member States’ continued commitment and support of the WHA targets should be explicitly articulated, as well as recognising the need for commitments that go beyond the WHA 2025 targets.
- Gender and the issue of equality are not addressed and this omission should be rectified.
Ensuring an end to all forms of gender discrimination, recognising this as one of the greatest causes of undernutrition. Action to end hunger must transform societal norms that result in girls eating last and least, that keeps girls out of school, limits women’s income, voice and productivity, and that lead to child marriage. Improving women’s status and role, their access to education as well as their access to and control over resources is key (i.e. land, income, agricultural inputs and agricultural services).
- The second draft of the Rome Declaration continues to have a bias toward a food system approach. Many social and environmental factors such as gender, environmental health, optimal caring and feeding practices are key determinants. Other drivers and determinants of malnutrition need to be acknowledged and addressed. There is significant space and need for further promoting a balance between food systems approaches, nutrition sensitive interventions and nutrition specific interventions.
- It would be useful to explicitly mention the three underlying causes of malnutrition (Food, Care and Health) in the text to show the importance of all three being satisfied if nutritional status is to be improved.
- There is no mention of the vast transformation that urbanization will have on food systems and nutrition outcomes.
- We would suggest that mention is made that as food systems change and families, including the poor, utilize commercially produced complementary foods for children, explicit normative guidance will be required to help countries operationalize and enforce necessary steps to ensure the appropriate marketing of these products for children 6-24 months while at the same time protecting and promoting optimal breastfeeding. This is an issue that the WHA is addressing during its 67th Session, thus of utmost importance. See
Lancet Series 2013 Paper 4 by Gillespie et. al.
- The Outcome declaration should also push for having coding for nutrition-sensitive efforts as a first step towards thinking of normative guidance for nutrition sensitive efforts and to contribute to comparable data across countries.
Specific references
- In relation to the second bullet under paragraph 5, poverty is indeed a major contributor to malnutrition, but also vice versa - malnutrition is also a contributor to poverty.
- Point 7 suggest adding – ‘Recognise the environmental, societal changes, and economic and gender disparities have an impact on dietary and physical patterns, …’
- While 12 d) recognises that public investments and appropriate market regulations in food, agriculture and other sectors are crucial to overcoming malnutrition, the Code on Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes is conspicuously missing and should be explicitly referenced.
- Under paragraph 12:
o A point should be made on the importance of/encourage the integration of a multi- stakeholder approach to ensure food and nutrition security.
o Support the alignment behind national needs from all stakeholders and clear processes for making this happen.
o Highlight the importance of diversification and the central role of small holder farmers as the main producers of food.
- Under a ‘vision for global action to end all forms of malnutrition’, the need to support coordinated action of different actors is mentioned as well as the need for global and national policy coherence. The need and importance of coherence and consistency between the various global frameworks and initiatives on nutrition and food security should also be stressed, such as the Nutrition for Growth, WHA framework against the 6 targets, and SUN.
Commitment section
- We would encourage additional clarity/specificity on the commitments referenced, there is still work needed to make them SMARTER, in relation to what is and will be ‘measurable’ specifically, which also encompasses the timeliness.
- The commitment to action could be strengthened by adding ‘ensuring universal access to safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene for households, schools, and health facilities. WASH is critical to addressing malnutrition, preventing infections and diseases such as diarrhoea’.
- In commitment section, we further suggest adding a point on:
o Generating more evidence on nutrition-sensitive programming and policies to inform scale up and integration in policies, strategies, plans of government (multi- sectoral) and various line ministries.
- We support the idea of pushing for a Decade of Action, but this should not be UN only. It needs to be owned by multiple stakeholders.
- A commitment should be made to plan for accountability in a way that is aligned with the broader nutrition architecture (e.g. GNR, WHA, N4G)- to ensure efficient monitoring which begins as soon as possible after commitments
- In relation to the above point - a commitment and reference to learn from current experience should be mentioned.
These comments are made on behalf of the World Obesity Federation and endorsed by the UK Health Forum.
Thank you for this opportunity to comment on the revised draft of the political outcome document of the ICN2. Overall, we commend the content and welcome the inclusion of both under and over nutrition within the broader topic of malnutrition.
However, we are concerned that the declaration lacks any commitment to time bound reporting or monitoring as well as to the absence of any implementation plans. We call on the Joint Working Group to specify the timeframe for the Framework for Action (we propose 2015-2025) and the Decade of Action on Nutrition. For the purpose of monitoring and accountability, we recommend that the ICN political outcomes document is ratified / adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2015 and that progress towards implementation of the political outcomes document on nutrition is reviewed by the UN General Assembly once every five years (ie in 2020 and 2025).
These points should be addressed if the declaration is to lead to concrete action being taken, with appropriate accountability.
Specific comments on each of the paragraphs can be found in the attached document.
Best wishes
Hannah Brinsden
Policy & Advocacy Researcher
World Obesity Federation
1. General comments on the Draft of the Rome Declaration on Nutrition.
Paragraph 3: IDF strongly recommends that it is rephrased to reflect the right of everyone to have access to “sufficient, safe and affordable nutritious food”. Affordability of nutritious food is also a key determinant to all forms of malnutrition, both in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and in high-income countries (HIC).
2. Specific comments on the paragraphs related to the multiple threats that malnutrition poses to sustainable development (paragraphs 4-10).
Paragraph 4: IDF requests that it includes overconsumption, defined as population-wide increased consumption of energy intake, as a form of malnutrition. This paragraph also needs to specify that, apart from increasing susceptibility to communicable and noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), malnutrition can also be a direct risk factor for NCDs: in the case of diabetes, obesity, overweight and overconsumption are among its main risk factors.
Paragraph 5 should clearly state that poverty is a major contributor of malnutrition in rural and urban areas of both LMICs and HIC, as it interferes with food availability and affordability.
Paragraph 7: 90% of the adults with diabetes are affected by type 2 diabetes, which has obesity and sedentary lifestyles as its main risk factors. For that reason, we request that this paragraph states that environment and societal changes lead to a higher susceptibility to obesity, diabetes and other NCDs.
Paragraph 10 should also note that maternal overweight and obesity at the time of pregnancy, which is a risk factor for childhood obesity and gestational diabetes, have increased steadily since 1980. Also, in section e) of this paragraph, IDF would like to highlight that dietary risk factors may account for more than 10% of the global burden of disease, given into account that 8.3% of the adult population is estimated to have diabetes in 2013 - 90% of them having type 2 diabetes, which has obesity as one of its main risk factors.
3. Specific comments on the vision for global action to end all forms of malnutrition (paragraphs 11-12).
Paragraph 11: IDF requests that section a) of this paragraph specifically mentions the special needs of pregnant women, as the rising trend of maternal overweight and obesity is leading to a transgenerational transmission of obesity, which is one of factors fuelling the diabetes epidemic in LMICs.
Section c) of the same paragraph should mention that policy coherence is specially required in regards to the investments and incentives for the production of crops used in high-processed food, especially sugar.
Paragraph 12: in section c) food marketing needs to be listed along with production, processing, storing, distribution, preparation and consumption, as marketing has an obvious impact on nutrition through consumer choices and preferences.
Section e) of this paragraph should also include avoiding excessive intake of calories. Section f) should read “access to safe, affordable and nutritious foods”, for the reasons explained in paragraph 3.
4. Specific comments in the appropriate fields relating to these commitments (paragraph 13):
Commitment a): eradicate hunger and all forms of malnutrition, particularly to eliminate stunting, wasting and overweight in children under 5 and anemia in women; eliminating undernourishment and reversing rising trends in obesity;
IDF recommends that this commitment includes reversing the rising trends in obesity and diabetes, as did the original document, as well as eradicate the overconsumption of poorly nutritious foods.
Commitment b): reshape food systems through coherent implementation of public policies and investment plans throughout food value chains to serve the health and nutrition needs of the growing world population by providing access to safe, nutritious and healthy foods in a sustainable and resilient way;
Assuring affordable nutritious and healthy foods should be part of this commitment, for the reasons previously mentioned for paragraph 3 and 12.
Commitment g): integrate the objectives of the Framework for Action into the post-2015 development agenda including a possible global goal on food security and nutrition.
IDF greatly supports the inclusion of a goal on food security and nutrition in the post-2015 development agenda and, therefore, welcomes this commitment.
Dear Sir, Dear Madam,
The International Dairy Federation (IDF) is grateful for the opportunity to be able to comment again on the revised draft political outcome document of the ICN2. Please find in attachement the comments I am submitting on behalf of the IDF.
Kind regards,
Laurence
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