Topic: Strengthening urban and peri-urban food systems to achieve food security and nutrition in the context of urbanization and rural transformation – V0 draft of the HLPE-FSN report #19
Background to this submission
Mothers First Contributed to the VO draft of the Inequalities work stream. In that work stream we unsuccessfully advocated for the inclusion of acute food insecurity which is extreme food insecurity and its associated nutritional outcomes in the final Inequalities Report. A link to our submission on this platform can be found here https://www.fao.org/fsnforum/comment/11101
Given that the mandate of the CFS and MyPOW is to reach the most food insecure and malnourished people we sought to understand why the inequalities report failed to achieve this central mandate.
Our findings are stark and show that the expertise and narrative of the CFS and the HLPE have traditionally centred around chronic hunger with its strong ties to the SOFI Report. This has created a blind spot within the CFS framework of achieving its vision to reach the most food-insecure and malnourished people in our world.
Our policy input paper for the Open-Ended Working Group on the Policy Convergence Process for the Inequalities Report details that under the framework of SOFI, the CFS cannot fulfil its mandate of reaching the most food-insecure and malnourished people.
That input paper along with our recommendations can be found here.
Relevance of our findings to the peri-urban VO draft
Just as within the VO draft and the final Inequalities Report, this report focuses on chronic hunger and its associated nutritional outcome of stunting and being overweight. Our analysis of this report provides further evidence that the CFS framework cannot achieve its mandate of reaching the most severe food insecure and malnourished.
The attached report will focus on our analysis of the VO Draft using a keyword search of the document. We then provide an analysis of gaps beyond acute food insecurity that we feel are relevant and would be beneficial to the report.
This input paper will build on the previous submissions by taking a more in-depth look at the nutritional outcomes associated with acute malnutrition in women, adolescent girls and children. While it is generally accepted that acute malnutrition in children represented by child wasting is 30% lower for urban than rural, nonetheless as the report points out in its only reference to wasting stands at 8% which is considered a public health concern.
We will also explore the prevalence of maternal underweight and its impacts on maternal and child nutritional outcomes. Again while the prevalence of maternal malnutrition is lower in urban than rural it remains a significant challenge with a prevalence of 15%.
Note to the HLPE CC members and the writing teams
While we unreservedly acknowledge the wealth of experience and, in many cases a lifelong commitment to alleviating hunger and malnutrition. The writing team are experts in chronic hunger, be it through fisheries, agriculture, science, economics and innovation. In this regard as a report based on the writing team's background, this is an excellent first draft.
The gaps we have identified however centre around acute food insecurity and their nutritional outcomes.which currently affects over 340 million people, equating to almost 1 in 3 people who are hungry in our world today.
Kind Regards,
Pat Mc Mahon
Mothers First
Mr. Pat Mc Mahon