Director-General launches FAO Global Action Plan to prevent child wasting

The Food and Agriculture Organization’s Director-General, QU Dongyu, officially launched on Monday the new FAO Global Action Plan to prevent child wasting in 15 countries.

“Child wasting represents a particularly daunting challenge that we need to urgently and effectively address”, Qu highlighted during an event at FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy.

The initiative aims to help one million families with the most at-risk children in vulnerable countries to produce steady supplies of nutritious foods, and to promote good nutrition practices.  

Wasting is one of the key indicators used to evaluate childhood malnutrition, and it is a sign that a child has experienced short periods of undernutrition, resulting in significant wastage of muscle and fat tissue. 

“The most life-threatening form of undernutrition in early childhood, which increases children's risk of death by up to 12 times”, the Director-General warned, adding that currently the 15 worst-affected countries— the Action Plan’s key beneficiaries— are home to more than 30 million wasted children, 8 million of whom suffer from severe wasting.

For Qu, the situation is grim, but there is still time for action through coordinated efforts among humanitarian and development actors to address the issue’s root causes.

“That is why the Global Action Plan on Child Wasting is so critical. It calls on us all to work together to prevent, detect and treat child wasting globally”, the FAO chief emphasised.

A plan part of a system-wide UN effort

The Director-General further informed that his agency is seeking $500 million over the next two years to help the most vulnerable children in households in Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, the Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Yemen.

“Approximately two-thirds of people experiencing acute food insecurity live in rural areas and rely on some form of agriculture for their survival”, Qu underscored.  “For this reason, FAO is scaling-up efforts to address child wasting under the Global Action Plan, together with partners across the United Nations system”, he added.

According to the Director-General, the Action Plan is aligned with national, regional and global priorities, helping to deliver on the FAO Strategic Framework 2022-31, and contributing to the transformation of global agrifood systems to be more efficient, more inclusive, more resilient and more sustainable.  

“I call on you to invest in prevention now to reduce child wasting today. In these times of overwhelming and overlapping crises, this is more important than ever”, Qu urged.