FAO.org

Large numbers of people in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) region suffer from hunger and malnutrition, with recent estimates indicating that 14.9 percent of the people in the region suffer from hunger or undernourishment. There is also a continued high incidence of malnutrition. In the context of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, new strategies are required to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG2) of eliminating hunger and malnutrition by 2030. It was realized that a SAARC-level regional framework and plan of action would help to enhance and complement national-level efforts in this field. A new regional vision for food and nutrition security, as well as a new set of strategies and programmes consistent with SDG2, needed to be developed. There was also a need to build the institutional and human resource capacity of the SAARC Secretariat and SAC to develop, coordinate, monitor and evaluate high-priority regional programmes and projects on food and nutrition security. The project assisted the region to achieve long-term food and nutrition security by developing effective regional food and nutrition security frameworks and their delivery mechanisms.