United Nations System
Standing Committee on Nutrition

 

Report of the Sub-Committee on Nutrition at its Twenty-Fifth Session

II.  Work in Progress:  Summary of Discussion and Conclusions

J. Bilaterals' Statement

98.  The bilateral organizations' statement is reproduced below. Since UN agencies report to the SCN on their activities in nutrition, it was suggested that in future bilateral agencies report briefly on activities funded by them or carried out jointly with developing country agencies. This would be beneficial to all agencies participating in the work of the SCN.

"In line with previous SCN meetings the bilateral group used this opportunity to meet informally several times.  We want to note that this year there has been a wider representation of bilateral organizations than ever before and that some bilateral organizations have participated for the first time.  Our meetings have therefore served as important fora for informal discussions of common issues, networking and sharing of experiences.

We appreciate the work by the Secretariat during the year, notably SCN News, the finalization of the Third Report on the World Nutrition Situation, and the preparations for the 25th SCN Session.  From our discussions we would like to report on the following:

Working Groups:  Well organized and productive working groups have shown the important role these can play.  For further improvement we suggest:

  • Working Groups should be clearly task-oriented and once the task has been accomplished, made redundant.
  • Topics be developed for working groups in the light of the challenges of the 21st century.

Many important topics are not represented in the working groups, at the same time some of the current ones have outlived their purpose as a separate group.  Thus we suggest that the individual micronutrient groups are combined into one, that the question of complementary feeding is given due consideration in the infant feeding group and that topics such as general malnutrition and nutrition during the lifecycle be considered for future groups.

Strengthening nutrition in development programmes: We are pleased to note that the issue paper initiated by DANIDA was considered favourably by the AGN and welcome their suggestions.  We discussed the relation between this paper and the first draft report by the Commission.

Food Aid and Emergency Feeding:  The SCN work on food aid and emergency feeding is appreciated and should be continued.

Infant Feeding: The bilateral group urges the SCN to take up the policy suggestions raised by Isatou Semega-Janneh, in particular the challenges to SCN members to include colostrum as part of the immunization scheme, to add breastmilk to the list of essential drugs and to consider including breastmilk in the food balance sheets.

Mainstreaming Gender Equality: We appreciate that gender was the focus of this year=s Symposium.  In light of the platform for action, developed and endorsed by national governments at the Fourth UN Conference on Women in Beijing, there is a need for SCN to recognize a gender approach to nutrition policy and programme development, i.e. focus on both women and men and the relation between then rather than an exclusive focus on women.

Cooperation:  We have noted with concern the comments made about the adverse effects on poor developing countries of the lack of cooperation at the country level, between UN agencies.  We would urge the SCN to make every effort to rectify this, and the proposed strategy document should present a clear strategy for such cooperation.

Information by the Asian Development Bank (ADB):  The bilateral group also appreciated the information given by Dr J. Hunt in that the ADB has started to commit resources to investment in nutrition.

Other Issues: The bilaterals also noted the need for more coherent support to nutrition training and human capacity building for the nutritional well-being of people, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa.  In addition the bilateral group also discussed SCN networking, follow-up to the World."