United Nations System
Standing Committee on Nutrition

SCN's Annual Sessions

The SCN undertakes a range of activities to meet its mandate . Annual meetings have representation from concerned UN Agencies, from 15 to 20 bilateral partners, non-governmental agencies, civil society organizations, academia, as well as invitees on specific topics. These meetings include symposia on subjects of current importance for policy.  Meetings of some of the SCN Working Groups usually take place during the annual sessions. Details of the Working Groups can be found here.

SCN's 35th Annual Session

More than 350 participants from a wide range of agencies, organizations and countries met to discuss how to accelerate the reduction of maternal and child undernutrition at the 35th SCN Session, held 2-7 March 2008 in Hanoi, Vietnam, hosted by the Vietnamese Government. There was broad agreement that the recent Lancet Nutrition Series brings an important new body of evidence for the enormous burden and consequences of maternal and child undernutrition that is inhibiting global development. The Series also provides important new evidence for the benefit of a set of specific nutrition interventions, operating at the immediate and underlying levels that together, in addition to other poverty reduction efforts, can help to accelerate the reduction of maternal and child undernutrition and in doing so contribute to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Furthermore the Lancet Nutrition Series outlines some of the institutional and coordinative capacities that are needed at the national and international levels in order to allow this set of interventions to be taken scale in the most affected countries. The SCN participants, bringing with them experience from their respective fields of expertise, discussed how the key messages and contributions from the Lancet Series would help to move the agenda forward in their respective thematic and geographic working areas and the role of the SCN in helping to doing this.

Session Documentation:

• Session Report
• Recommendations from the 35th SCN Session
• PowerPoint presentations from the sessions are attached to the agenda
• Working Group reports are available from the Working Group web pages
• Background documentation for the 35th SCN Session:
  • Final Agenda (html) (pdf)
  • Concept Note
  • Executive Summary of the Lancet Nutrition Series available from www.globalnutritionseries.org/series

The SCN News 36 (mid-2008) will feature papers from the presentations on the Symposium on Monday 3 March.

Please sign up for the SCN EMail Update to receive announcements of recent posting to the SCN website.

If you have any questions please contact: scn@who.int

Individual Working Group Reports are available on the Working Group page.

Previous Sessions:

34th Session
Rome, Italy
26 Feb - 1 Mar 2007

33rd Session
Geneva, Switzerland
13-17 March 2006

32nd Session
Brasilia, Brasil
14-18 March 2005

31st Session
UN, New York
22-26 March 2004

30th Session
Chennai, India
3-7 March 2003

29th Session
Berlin-Köpenick, Germany
11-15 March 2002

28th Session
Nairobi, Kenya
2-6 April 2001

27th Session
Washington, DC
10-14 April 2000

26th Session
Geneva, Switzerland
12-15 April 1999

25th Session
Oslo, Norway
30 March - 2 April 1998