Foro Global sobre Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutrición (Foro FSN)

Dear all,

Many thanks to our early contributors. I am just back from Guatemala, and was looking first-hand into how to deliver nutrition services to the most vulnerable. Some of what is discussed resonates already.

Inherent to many discussions of social protection are issues around human rights, respect, and equity. Who is included? Under what criteria? In what locations? Do the programs fundamentally impact their dignity? Should we even *need* programs?

In fact, the scope of this conversation is at its core about experience, and the opportunity here through the FSN Forum and in-person in Moscow is to examine how we can collectively increase quality of life across multiple fronts. Thanks for the comments on food education and measurement of nutrition outcomes, which are examples of things we need to think about in more detail.

These conversations, and the questions included here, reflect an identified need to link nutrition and social protection programs. We often discuss ways to ‘reduce the equity gap’, and this is one of them; what we anticipated when putting this discussion together, is a way to compare, contrast, and share ways that address the roots of malnutrition better than has been done. There is an old proverb saying, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” While the FSN Forum may not be a channel reaching directly to those affected by the programming, it is a powerful tool to reach many outside the ‘ivory towers’ who know how to improve programming. We are convening as a global community, taking a small slice of a much larger issue, and pushing forward together.

We look forward to remaining weeks of this discussion (and hope to see more contributions from social protection experts)!

Though posts have been few so far, we have had a really interesting spread on this really interesting subject, and I have appreciated all of them very much. The pictures of the children and the eggs were especially nice  - thank you, Dr Emal,  and thank you for telling us a tale where the eggs went into the family meals and not just to the market.

Social security schemes seem to be a foundation stone of social democracy and I don't see a lot of difference from social protection schemes (maybe someone can correct me).  However, I'm bypassing the question of whether such strategies should be put in place by governments to redress inequity.  I am also risking the wrath of Claudio Schuftan by flying the flag for food education, which in my vision is everyone's birthright, especially in view of the nutrition transition and the present power of Big Food. 

Bringing social protection and food education together, I would like to raise three points:  

The first, which now has quite a lot of supporting evidence, is that many interventions aiming at increasing food security (including social protection handouts, food vouchers, income generation, agricultural projects etc.) fail to have a significant impact on nutrition status because they simply enhance existing inadequate dietary profiles and patterns of household expenditure. Adding a little food education to the mix can significantly tilt the outcomes of such actions towards better family diet. The best-known case in social protection is probably that of SNAP in the USA, which found it necessary to create SNAP-ED to introduce the missing education component.  

The second is about how we measure nutrition status.  In one major social protection scheme the indicator selected was dietary diversity. This was shown to be increased by regular cash handouts, mainly because most households enjoyed their higher income by eating more meat. This was all to the good, but they did not at the same time eat more fruit and vegetables, in which their diet was also deficient, and which were equally important to improving nutrition status, nor was dietary varied assessed.  Meat generally has status in poor communities and vegetables do not, while fruit is often regarded as a non-food, nice but not necessary.  I am asking if our indicators are sufficiently sensitive to the concept of a good diet.

My third question is Why are we not hearing from the social protection people?  

Jane Sherman, nutrition education consultant, FAO

Dear FSN-Moderator,

Attached please find an article on Innovative Backyard Poultry Development for increased assets, income and nutrition, which is in line with "Nutrition-Sensitive Social Protection Programs Around the World – What’s being done and to what effect?.

Best regards

Dear Lucy and Ahmed,

My serious concerns on the matter of this consultation all revolve around question 1.

1. Setting the stage: Why are you interested in Nutrition-Sensitive Social Protection? What is Nutrition-Sensitive Social Protection? What makes a social protection intervention “nutrition-sensitive”?

Your intro piece has, in my view, multiple flaws that will bias the consultation. Let me explain in the form of bullets.

You call for:

Making social safety nets and targeting work better. Safety nets have been designed to throw a crumb of bread to the needy without pulling them out of poverty. So we target ‘the poor’ (grr!) and do nothing about the system that perpetuates their poverty. Ultimately and dispassionately, it is all about avoiding social upheaval that will threaten the haves.

Social protection. To improve social protection, it would be nice to start asking the affected what they think needs to be done, no? This is a fundamental human rights principle… I feel the call may be bringing responses from top-down initiatives around the world which will mostly be localized with little replication prospects.

Stakeholders. (grr!) Isn’t it high time we begin using claim holders and duty bearers instead?

Poverty reduction vs disparity reduction. When will we understand that the challenge is not poverty reduction, but disparity reduction? The pie is only so big; we do not need to make it grow with the same slicing; we must re-slice it far more equitably…. and nutrition-sensitive social protection will simply not do this.

Equity vs equality. You use equity where you should be using equality. Equity is a justice concept; equality is a human rights concept (and nutrition and social protection are HR issues).

Increasing productivity. For God’s sake, we are trying to deal with a HR issue. We do NOT need an economic justification. Nutrition and social protection are a high priority, because HR are being violated. Point finale!

‘Investments in nutrition and early childhood development are therefore (therefore?) key determinants of long term economic growth’.  Investing in nutrition is a HR priority, no more, no less. Forget the economic growth justification. Growth for what? for more 99/1? For more depletion of natural resources and environmental degradation and precipitating climate change? We simply have to stop using this fallacious argument.

‘Programs targeted (?? see above) to enhance their impact on nutrition and lock in future human capital’. Ayayay! More of the same…. Human capital is such a neoliberal term. What we need is to lock-in is the respect and fulfillment of, in this case, the human right to nutrition and the human right to social protection.

Activities related to nutrition education and micronutrient supplementation… Nutrition education to teach people what they cannot afford? We have over 4 decades of negative experiences on this. Micronutrient supplementation is a darling of donors….it does not require addressing the thorny issue of the political roots of malnutrition as stunting more does.

I hope this contributes early-on to guide the agenda of the consultation. If this perspective is not brought up in Moscow, we may as well stay in our ivory towers.

Claudio in Ho Chi Minh City

[email protected]

>> English translation below <<

Nous ne connaisons pas un programme de ce genre au Togo. Il y a le ministère des affaires sociales : c'est tout. La nutrition-sensible n'est pas leur affaire.

We are not aware of any programme of this kind in Togo. There is the Ministry of Social Affairs: that's all. Nutrition-sensitive is not their business.