SPEAKER'S CORNER

Human Rights and the Right to Adequate Food
- An update on SCN News 18

Adequate Food - A Human Right

The ACC/SCN symposium ‘The Substance and Politics of a Human Rights Approach to Food and Nutrition Policies and Programmes’ of April 1999, indeed had a triggering effect on the attention given to the right to food at the international level.

In our early work on this topic there were not many supportive voices. In 1989, a study I carried out as a special rapporteur for the UN Sub-Commission on the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights, managed to bring the debate on economic and social rights out of the ideological morass of the Cold War. With my colleagues at the Norwegian Institute of Human Rights and the Institute for Nutrition Research at the University of Oslo, I then also presented what has since been referred to as the “right to food matrix”, intended as an educational tool to help in assessing, planning and implementing the right to food. In 1999, the study for the Sub-commission was updated.

It still took a long time before the concept took hold. Crucial was the World Food Summit (WFS) of 1996, where heads of state reaffirmed the right of everyone to have access to adequate, safe and nutritious food - consistent with the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger. They invited the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (HCHR) to lead work to clarify the content of the right to food and to suggest steps for the progressive realization of this right as a means of achieving food security for all. In the follow-up of WFS, consultations were held by the HCHR in Geneva in 1997 and in Rome in 1998, but it was the symposium during the ACC/SCN session in 1999 which really revitalized the process allowing further developments.

The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) was already working on the adoption of a “general comment” related to Article 11 of the Covenant which would better interpret the right to adequate food and to be free from hunger. The SCN symposium added further ideas and suggestions which helped to move the process forward. In May 1999, the Committee adopted its “General Comment No.12” (GC12) - the most authoritative interpretation to date of the right to food, the corresponding obligations, and steps to be taken at the national and international level to implement it.

GC12 affirms that the right to adequate food implies the availability of and sustainable access to food in sufficient quantity and quality to satisfy the dietary needs of individuals, being free from adverse substances and acceptable to a given culture; it adds that this right should not interfere with the enjoyment of other human rights. Fulfilling dietary needs implies that the diet as a whole is balanced for optimal growth, development and maintenance throughout the life cycle and according to gender and occupation.

The CESCR further noted that the right to adequate food, like any other human right, imposes three types or levels of obligations on State parties: the obligations to respect, to protect and to fulfil, the latter incorporating both an obligation to facilitate and to provide. To respect here means not taking any measures that result in preventing access to food. To protect means ensuring that enterprises or individuals do not deprive individuals of their access to adequate food. To fulfil (facilitate) means pro-actively engaging in activities that strengthen people’s access to and utilization of resources and means that ensure their livelihood, including food security. Finally, whenever individuals or groups are, for reasons beyond their control, unable to enjoy the right to adequate food by the means at their disposal, States have the obligation to fulfil (provide) that right directly. This obligation also applies for persons who are victims of natural or other disasters.

In terms of national implementation, GC12 called on states to adopt a strategy for the realization of the right to food, including the establishment of a legislative agenda for that purpose.

The General Comment laid a solid basis for further work. An International Project on the Right to Food in Development was established at the University of Oslo in April 2000. It engages in research, capacity-building and advisory functions related to the right to adequate food. For dissemination and outreach, it works in close co-operation with the World Alliance on Nutrition and Human Rights. In 2000, the Project held two international encounters, one of which was in co-operation with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the ACC/SCN Working Group on Nutrition, Ethics and Human Rights.

Also in 2000, the UN Commission on Human Right took an important step by appointing its own Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. His task has been to monitor the existing situation and to propose steps for better implementation. He has been especially active in establishing contacts with parliamentarians around the world and has developed some first guidelines for legislative action. In March 2001, experts met in Germany for a third round of consultations organized by the HCHR; the focus was on implementation. One major recommendation was to convene a set of national seminars with politicians and local decision-makers from the legislative and executive branches together with human rights experts, nutritionists, agriculturalists and other professionals. The purpose is to spark internal dialogues on national strategies on the right to food. Such seminars are being planned in 2002 in South Africa, Uganda, Mali, Nepal and Norway.

Asbjorn Eide, Norwegian Institute of Human Rights: Asbjorn. Eide@nihr.uio.no

Nutrition and Agriculture
- An update on SCN News 20

Where are we with nutrition and agriculture and where are we going?

Over the past 25 years, improvements in children’s nutrition have been significant yet uneven and slow in coming. International recognition of this shortcoming is reflected in one of the Millennium Development Goals that calls for halving hunger by 2015. To reach this goal, all our policy, programme and advocacy strategies and tools must be used to maximal effect.

Agriculture is receiving new attention as a contributor to improved nutrition. This interest is manifest when we look at the growing number of fora that include discussions pertaining to the linkages between nutrition and agriculture. After the World Food Summit (1996) such meetings were held in Ghana (1996), Eritrea and Kenya (1998), Ethiopia (1999), Philippines (1999), Germany (1999, 2001), South Africa (2000), Switzerland (2000), US (2000, 2001), and Kenya (2001). These meetings have built on efforts to demonstrate the pathways that link the two sectors. These linkages are most clearly seen when the focus is on the people - men and women alike - who express a need for and use technologies, practices and accumulated knowledge. Do we know if improved processes, technologies and practices have led to nutritional benefits?

There is a growing body of evidence that agricultural interventions do yield timely results in nutritional well-being. Examples exist for dietary diversification and micronutrients, as well as for increased yields of nutrient-rich and staple foods. One would expect that with such evidence, one would see increased investments in promoting and using such strategies. Yet, that is not the case. This paradox prompted the International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW) and IFPRI to investigate what was causing this under-investment. A worldwide survey was carried out of over 600 agriculture, nutrition and gender specialists. In Nairobi April 2001, discussions were held with stakeholder representatives from Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Uganda and the US. A second discussion with stakeholders was held in Washington in June 2001.

Survey findings suggested that while there is much common ground, there is sufficient divergence in viewpoints among stakeholders to explain why opportunities to link agriculture and nutrition have been missed. Further, while there is general recognition that addressing gender issues is important for maximizing impact of agricultural development and nutritional outcomes, there are wide differences in understanding as to how to do that. Some of these constraining factors include the lack of agreement on terms; narrow, too sector-specific training curricula; differing institutional priorities; vertical financial decision-making and budgetary allocations; and lack of political will. All these contribute to under-investment.

With support from USAID, a three-year multi-country study that builds on the findings from the survey and stakeholder meetings began implementation in December 2001. It covers three levels of activities: (a) actions to promote gender-sensitive linkages between nutrition and agriculture in five African countries; (b) similar actions at the broader international level; and (c) strengthening the capacity of nutrition and agriculture specialists in gender approaches and methodologies, strategic planning and advocacy strategies. The intended outcome is to foster greater investment in strategies that maximize the contributions agricultural interventions make to nutritional outcomes. Other initiatives that are under way to link nutrition and agriculture include efforts by the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA)’s FoodNet project, as well as the “Partnership to Cut Hunger in Africa” initiative that links African and US-based actors.

The alarming spread of HIV/AIDS in rural areas and the interaction between nutrition and HIV/ AIDS creates an additional urgent need to act expeditiously. With the increased visibility and the expanded application of the accumulated experience and knowledge we have regarding gender-sensitive linkages between nutrition and agriculture, we should be in a better position to reach the Millennium Goal of reducing poverty and hunger.

Charlotte Johnson-Welch, International Center for Research on Women (ICRW). charlotte@icrw.org

Nutrition Goals and Targets
- An update on SCN News 22

Achieving UNICEF Nutrition Goals - Some New Game Plans

It was hoped that the nutrition goals set out in the 1990 World Summit for Children and supported by nearly every country would have been achieved by the year 2000. These goals were and still are important and were well discussed in SCN News 22. They set out targets for nutritional achievement for children and their mothers. Globally, 11 years later, they have not been achieved despite some remarkable successes, namely in rates of low birthweight, stunting, vitamin A and iodine deficiency. Health and development benefits of these have followed. The lives of millions of children have been saved and their development enhanced. However, in too many countries the prevalence rates of malnutrition have not changed or have even deteriorated.

Much of the discussion at the recent IUNS Vienna meeting was around why the successes in some countries have not been achieved in others, and what new strategies are necessary to achieve global improvements. Several sessions at the Vienna meeting examined ways forward. A UNICEF symposium on the 1990s nutrition goals for women and children looked at progress and future challenges. There were also three concurrent sessions on Africa and Nutrition that included issues on policy and programmes. Each of them gave opportunity for discussion on problems and solutions.

Challenges to Overcome

Nutrition has often been left out of health sector reform policies and programmes. Many governments now focus on community financing, private/ public sector interface and fee for services. The move is towards those services which can be charged for including EPI, maternity services, birth spacing, infection control programmes, the provision of antibiotics and curative care. With the greater emphasis on fees, many of the low cost nutrition-related activities have been discontinued. Therefore, growth monitoring, nutrition interventions in pregnancy and vitamin A supplements cannot be found in many governments' health sector reform policies.

Many donors now concentrate on sector wide approaches and support their partners in priority setting and in consolidating programmes and budgets. They insist on using indicators that can be checked and give priority to reinforcing national capacities in management. Many health ministries have problems in prioritizing programmes when faced with many competing demands. The additional burden of HIV, the increasing epidemic of TB, malaria control, diarrhoeal and respiratory diseases and others make it difficult to choose. Additionally, the provision of health services with poorly developed infrastructure and poorly motivated staff makes the challenge even greater. Many of the programmes finally chosen are obviously important, but in too many cases nutrition interventions fall through the cracks. There are notable exceptions such as the integrated management of childhood illness (IMCI) in which nutrition plays a key role. But IMCI has yet to include a truly community based approach.

There is confusion on infant feeding messages for HIV positive mothers. Some warn about the potential infectivity of human breastmilk; others are less clear. Infant formula is often promoted with health staff often giving conflicting advice. WHO and UNICEF have produced guidelines to clarify these issues and there are some indications that exclusive breastfeeding for six months may decrease the rate of transmission of the virus through the milk. Moreover, EPI coverages have fallen in certain areas. Measles is reappearing in increasing numbers. The detrimental effects of measles on nutrition and on vitamin A status is well documented.

Iodine deficiency control is still often seen as a low priority compared with other programmes. Legislation has not been passed for salt iodization despite the clear public health benefits of iodization. There is sometimes poor implementation of national IDD programmes and failure to ensure that the salt in the market is adequately iodized. The news is not all bad though. There are many countries that have improved the nutritional status of their people and have either achieved or very nearly achieved the set nutrition goals. Learning from success can occur if countries focus on the reasons why some players have been more successful than others.

Set achievable goals and targets. There seems little point in setting goals and targets that cannot be achieved. It demotivates staff. We have thus to design nutrition interventions that are well costed and endowed with the needed resources. These need to be approved centrally and become part of sector wide approaches. For this, the nutrition community needs to be more vocal in its advocacy. Our colleagues who focus on vaccines, on HIV/ AIDS, TB or malaria are often more focused than we who seek to place nutrition in national policies. The ICN-sponsored National Plans of Action for Nutrition (NPANs) are a good place to start. However, many of these still sit on desks and have not been implemented. A fresh look at them is needed now with a greater emphasis on being more focused recognizing that not all can be implemented at the same time. The nutrition community needs to prioritize its actions rather than become dismayed when nothing occurs.

Focused programmes. There are good examples of ways in which we can focus key nutrition interventions. The reduction in the prevalence of low birthweight is one of them. Infection control (including malaria, intestinal helminths and STDs) and micronutrient interventions, have proven to reduce low birthweight in several countries. The point here is that we need to adapt these well proven and focused approaches to solve critical nutrition problems. Setting and monitoring appropriate indicators will then tell us if we are on track.

Publicise successes. Many countries have excellent programmes of which they are legitimately proud. But they fail to publicize them to wider audiences. Success breeds success. HIV, TB and malaria advocates are doing a better job. The challenge is to more aggressively put nutrition success stories on the map again.

The message from the participants was clear: There have been missed opportunities, there have been some new threats, but there are many more opportunities than weaknesses. Participants agreed to focus on and highlight success stories. You should start doing just that. SCN News is an excellent vehicle to do so.

Andrew Tomkins, Institute of Child Health: a.tomkins@ich. ucl.ac.uk

The rhetoric of international development targets and the reality of official development assistance There is an alarming gap between the rhetoric of poverty reduction and the size and characteristics of ODA. All International Development Targets are linked to the provision of basic social services for every child. The cost of giving every child access to such services is estimated at around $ 70-80 billion per year. But barriers to new exports from developing to industrialized countries, linked to agricultural subsidies in the North cost the developing countries more in lost export opportunities and revenues than the nearly $50 billion that they receive in ODA each year. There is an urgent need for consistency and coherence between aid policy and other policies in industrialized countries. Without this, worldwide poverty reduction may remain a mirage. Santosh Mehrotra, UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, June 2001: florence@unicef.org www.unicef-icdc.org

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

Editor's note: As many readers of SCN News know, the nutrition-related MDGs are intended to complement (or replace?) the goals set at the World Summit for Children now being monitored by UNICEF using multiplie indicator cluster (MIC) surveys (see UNICEF, Programme News). We invite your comments or critiques of the MDGs. We will publish them in the Speakers’ Corner in SCN News 24.

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
Goals and Targets	Indicators
Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Target 1: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day	1. Proportion of population below $1 per day (PPP-values) 2. Poverty gap ratio [incidence x depth of poverty]
	3. Share of poorest quintile in national consumption
Target 2: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger	4. Prevalence of underweight children (under-five years of age) 5. Proportion of population below minimum level of dietary energy consumption
Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education
Target 3: Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling	6. Net enrolment ratio in primary education 7. Proportion of pupils starting grade 1 who reach grade 5 8. Literacy rate of 15-24 year olds
Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
Target 4: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education 9. preferably by 2005 and to all levels of education no later than 2015	9. Ratio of girls to boys in primary, secondary and tertiary education 10. Ratio of literate females to males of 15-24 year olds 11. Share of women in wage employment in the non-agricultural sector
	12. Proportion of seats held by women in national parliament
Goal 4: Reduce child mortality
Target 5: Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate	13. Under-five mortality rate 14. Infant mortality rate 15. Proportion of 1 year old children immunised against measles
Goal 5: Improve maternal health
Target 6: Reduce by three-quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio	16. Maternal mortality ratio 17. Proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Target 7: Have halted by 2015, and begun to reverse, the spread of HIV/ AIDS	18. HIV prevalence among 15-24 year old pregnant women 19. Contraceptive prevalence rate 20. Number of children orphaned by HIV/AIDS
Target 8: Have halted by 2015, and begun to reverse, the incidence of malaria and other major diseases	21. Prevalence and death rates associated with malaria 22. Proportion of population in malaria risk areas using effective malaria prevention and treatment measures 23. Prevalence and death rates associated with tuberculosis 24. Proportion of TB cases detected and cured under DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment Short Course)
Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
Target 9: Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources	1. Proportion of land area covered by forest 2. Land area protected to maintain biological diversity 3. GDP per unit of energy use (as proxy for energy efficiency)
	4. Carbon dioxide emissions (per capita) Plus two figures of global atmospheric pollution: ozone depletion and the accumulation of global warming gases
Target 10: Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water	5. Proportion of population with sustainable access to an improved water source 6. Proportion of people with access to improved sanitation
Target 11: By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers	7. Proportion of people with access to secure tenure[Urban/rural disaggregation of several of the above indicators may be relevant for monitoring improvement in the lives of slum dwellers]
Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development
Target 12: Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financial system	Some of the indicators listed below will be monitored separately for the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Africa, landlocked countries and small island developing states.
Includes a commitment to good governance, development, and poverty reduction - both nationally and internationally	Official Development Assistance 8.Net ODA as percentage of DAC donors’ GNI [targets of 0.7% in total and 0.15% for LDCs]
Target 13: Address the Special Needs of the Least Developed Countries	9.Proportion of ODA to basic social services (basic education, primary health care, nutrition, safe water and sanitation)
Includes: tariff and quota free access for LDC exports; enhanced programme of debt relief for HIPC and cancellation of official bilateral debt; and more generous ODA for countries committed to poverty reduction	10.Proportion of ODA that is untied 11.Proportion of ODA for environment in small island developing states 12.Proportion of ODA for transport sector in land-locked countries
Target 14: Address the Special Needs of landlocked countries and small island developing states
(through Barbados Programme and 22nd General Assembly provisions)	Market Access
Target 15: Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries through national and international measures in order to make debt sustainable in the long term	13.Proportion of exports (by value and excluding arms) admitted free of duties and quotas 14.Average tariffs and quotas on agricultural products and textiles and clothing 15.Domestic and export agricultural subsidies in OECD countries 16.Proportion of ODA provided to help build trade capacity
	Debt Sustainability
	17.Proportion of official bilateral HIPC debt cancelled
	18.Debt service as a percentage of exports of goods and services
	19.Proportion of ODA provided as debt relief
	20.Number of countries reaching HIPC decision and completion
Target 16: In co-operation with developing countries, develop and implement strategies for decent and productive work for youth	21.Unemployment rate of 15-24 year olds
Target 17: In co-operation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable, essential drugs in developing countries	22.Proportion of population with access to affordable essential drugs on a sustainable basis
Target 18: In co-operation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications	23.Telephone lines per 1000 people 24.Personal computers per 1000 people

Extracted from: Roadmap towards the implementation of the United Nations Millennium Declaration. UN General Assembly, A56/326, 2001. http://www.un.org/documents/ga/docs/56/a56326.pdf

Socioeconomic inequalities in child malnutrition in the developing world Malnutrition is concentrated among the worst off. Yet targets are still defined in terms of population averages. It is not just that the poor have higher rates of malnutrition. The rate of malnutrition declines continuously with rising living standards. The fact that poorer children have higher rates of stunting and underweight is not due to chance or sampling variability. Inequalities in stunting and underweight are statistically significant in almost all countries. Inequalities in underweight tend to be larger than inequalities in stunting. Egypt and Vietnam have the most equal distributions of malnutrition, and Nicaragua, Peru and Morocco have highly unequal distributions. Egypt and Romania do well in terms of both the average prevalence of malnutrition and its distribution (an indicator of equity). Peru has a higher average level of stunting than Egypt and higher poor-non-poor inequality. But many countries do well on one count and badly on the other. Brazil, has a far lower (<20%) stunting rate overall than Bangladesh (>50%), but has four times as much inequality. This analysis leads to some interesting rank reversals in the country league table... Wagstaff A and Watanabe N (2000) Poverty and Human Resources. Development Research Group, World Bank.

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Dear SCN News,

I appreciated the July 2001 issue of SCN News very much, particularly since I am in the thick of reviewing the Philippines six-year Plan of Action for Nutrition.

There are nutrition goals/targets and there are nutrition goals/targets...

Formulated in the manner that they were by international experts, and in the absence of accompanying mechanisms and resources at the national level to analyse and reset them - as seen fit on the basis of the country's own perspective - we should not be surprised that the goals/targets were not met. It is ludicrous to expect countries with different starting points in terms of their nutrition problems and contexts to get to the same finish line in the same period of time. That the countries themselves made such commitments is another matter.

Further, it would be naive to expect decision-making in public nutrition (e.g. the setting of goals and targets) to be a simple step-by-step procedure. Socio-political factors and the perceptions and interests of key individuals and institutions influence what situations are considered problematic, how problems are defined, which causes are given attention, why certain actions are taken, and what indicators are used to monitor progress. The latter because, to measure progress, many institutions use averages which only tell us about overall progress.

The deprivation perspective is more often than not missing, so we are left in the cold as to who the most deprived groups are hidden in that average (by income, gender, ethnicity...) and if they have progressed over time. But this is not all. The same institutions seldom bother with the inequality perspective which asks what the disparity between groups is and the progress made in narrowing that inequality.

So, you see, there also are nutrition indicators and nutrition indicators...

Sincerely yours,

Dr Cecilia Florencio
University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City cecilia.florencio@up.edu.ph

Dear SCN News,

I wanted to share with you some of the work we are doing here in India, because of its interest to SCN News readers. We are working on school nutrition and health particularly on a combination of deworming + vitamin A + iron supplementation in the classroom. Results have been most successful and cost-effective (20-25 US ct/yr). Since 1994, we have covered three million children in Gujarat. The health package is piggy- backed on the MidDay-Meal Program adding no extra cost. Micronutrient status, school attendance, attention span and school performance have significantly improved. The state of Karnataka has just adopted our approach for 1-4 million school children. We think FRESH (Focus Resources for Effective School Health) may have an interest in this programme (see SCN News 21, p 50).

We are using the same deworming + micronutrient delivery package to improve the health, productivity and earnings of plantation and industrial female workers. We think ILO may have an interest in this programme.

We are also involved in complementary feeding of under twos. In most South Asian communities, exclusive breastfeeding is continued until the baby is about two years of age. Much more attention needs to be paid to complementary feeding patterns that are appropriate, affordable and accessible. We have for long been using amylase-rich-foods (ARF). The Government of Karnataka is incorporating 7% millet ARF into its processed complementary food which is being distributed to two million under-twos in its Integrated Child Development Services Programme. We are now working on the concept of a sachet/sprinkler containing both ARF + the baby’s daily requirement of vitamins/ minerals for about 10 US ct/sachet. We are looking for funding to upscale this project.

Sincerely yours,
Professor Tara Gopaldas
Director, Tara Consultancy Services, Bangalore keroo@vsnl.com

Dear SCN News,

Whilst the basic role of the International Union of Nutritional Sciences is to support and advocate for the science of nutrition, nutrition's imprimatur among the sciences is that it has more to do with the well-being and health of people and their environs. So, although itself a multidisciplinary science, nutrition has great opportunities to project its role by reaching out to civil society. Partnerships with civil society are thus very much on the agenda of IUNS for the next four years.

As IUNS President for the period 2001-2005, I intend for IUNS:

To be involved in the development of a new nutrition science underpinned by evidence-based research findings and community development.

To harness old and new technologies and communication techniques to advance nutrition, health and overall economic development.

To reconceptualize the role of food and health both in socio-cultural and bio-medical terms.

To place a major emphasis on a sustainable supply and access to food, paying adequate attention to food security and bio-security issues.

To give priority to IUNS work addressing Africa's problems, because of its immediate urgency and importance for future generations.

Establish taskforces and reference groups on econutrition, nutrition and long-term health (rather than chronic disease), evidence-based nutrition, nutrition and technology, nutrition and infection, food-borne diseases, and harmonization of culturally relevant nutrition standards.

Develop further partnerships with other agencies, NGOs, the education, and corporate sectors.

Use telecommunications and information technology to develop needed educational linkages and effective networking mechanisms worldwide.

Regionalize the work of IUNS for greater engagement and effectiveness of its members.

Disseminate information on success stories.

Sincerely yours,

Mark Wahlqvist, Monash University, Australia
mark.wahlqvist@med.monash.edu.au

Book Announcement - Call for Interested Contributors At the recent International Congress of Nutrition in Vienna, a symposium was held on National and Regional Household Nutrition and Health Surveys: Use of Information for Program Planning, Implementation and Policy Formation. Surveys from Haiti, Georgia, the Dominican Republic, The Gambia, Guinea, Mozambique, as well as CDC and DHS surveys were presented. Michael Latham delivered the keynote address. It is planned that a book on this subject be published, it will include the symposium presentations and other contributed papers. Papers can deal with a variety of nutrition and health surveys from around the world, including, for example, national, regional or smaller-scale surveys implemented by governments, UN or bilateral agencies, NGOs, refugee agencies, educational institutions, private organizations and others. The contributions should emphasize how collected data have been used. Surveys historically have been criticised for collecting data without adequate plans for follow-up. Manuscripts should be less than 5,000 words. Interested contributors are invited to email up to two pages of description for consideration of inclusion in the book to the editors by April 1, 2002. Contact: Irwin J. Shorr: ijshorr@erols.com or Michael Latham: mcl6@cornell.edu