Inputs by UN Nutrition

UN Nutrition is a UN inter-agency coordination and collaboration mechanism for nutrition at the global and country levels. 

The burden of malnutrition in all its forms in the world remains inadmissibly high. While there has been progress it has been inconsistent and slow. At the current pace, hunger, undernutrition, overweight and obesity will continue to burden all countries and hinder social and economic development in the post 2030 world. An acceleration of progress is needed to accomplish the Agenda 2030 vision, leaving no one behind. UN Nutrition works to overcome fragmentation, increase harmonization on nutrition and provide coordinated and aligned support to governments for greater impact for children, women and people everywhere. Through UN Nutrition, UN agencies, programmes and funds leverage their collective strengths, build synergies, increase efficiencies and complementarities, and ultimately support governments and partners to deliver results on nutrition objectives and targets at all levels, from national to sub-national.

The HLPF will meet in 2021 under the auspices of ECOSOC, to review SDGs 1, 2, 3, 8, 10, 12, 13, 16 and 17.

The SDGs are profoundly transformative, cutting across technical sectors and providing a united vision for all nations. They encourage synergies between the individual actors and goals, which are by their nature, interconnected and indivisible. Good nutrition lies at the heart of these synergies and acts as a catalyst for the achievement of the 2030 Agenda as a whole.

UN Nutrition’s inputs will focus on the nutrition-related impacts of the COVID-19 and mitigating measures, while proposing recommendations for action to accelerate progress in meeting the SDGs, considering not only the SDGs under review but also their integrated, indivisible and interlinked nature.

Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the implementation of the SDGs under review in the 2021 HLPF from the vantage point of people’s food and nutrition security.
Malnutrition in all its forms remains one of the main challenges the global community faces today. One in nine people are  hungry or undernourished, while 149 million children under 5 years of age are  affected by stunting globally. Meanwhile one in three people are either overweight or obese, increasing the risk of noncommunicable diseases. Importantly, all countries have populations that experience multiple forms of malnutrition. However, global and national numbers conceal large inequalities within countries, with the most vulnerable people being most affected. Country averages tend to hide this skewed distribution and make it harder to identify the most in need.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had serious impacts on diets and nutrition.  The UNSG Policy Brief: The Impact of COVID-19 on Food Security and Nutrition, launched in June 2020, presents estimates that some 49 million extra people may fall into extreme poverty and that every percentage point drop in global Gross Domestic Product will mean an additional 0.7 million stunted children.

Exacerbating the nutrition challenges, COVID-19 does not treat people equally. Poor people who already face the consequences of inequalities are most affected by the virus and its social and economic consequences. Undernourished people have weaker immune systems and may be at greater risk of severe illness. Poor metabolic health, including obesity and diabetes, is strongly linked to worse COVID-19 outcomes, including risk of hospitalisation and death. Furthermore, the poorer often lack access to quality health care if infected and the imposed restrictions have hindered the informal economy, upon which many are dependent, including migrants and seasonal workers, negatively impacting their livelihoods and income.

Keeping children in school, especially for girls, is associated with better nutrition not only for the girl child but also for their future children, positively affecting the next generations. School meals are an effective vehicle for getting children to school, keeping them there, and ultimately improving their nutritional status, overall health and learning. The negative impacts of COVID-19 in the education sector were also vast.  By April 2020, 199 countries had closed their schools and 370 million children were suddenly deprived of what for many was their main meal of the day adding to the burden.
The malnutrition burden can only be tackled by understanding and fully taking into account its underlying causes, including social, economic, political, environmental and cultural factors negatively affecting food, health, education and care systems. Integrated policies are therefore needed that combine efforts of multiple sectors and act on the interlinkages between biodiversity loss, environmental hazards, climate change, food systems, diets, nutrition, education and health, in line with SDG 17.

The COVID-19 pandemic has once again exposed the interactions of food, education, social protection and health systems, with weaknesses in them disproportionately impacting already vulnerable populations, bringing light to the urgent need of making all possible efforts to meet the SDGs. 

Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic in ways that help building an effective and sustainable path to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda, requires measures are taken to protect and promote good nutrition.

The following four key recommendations addressed to the global development community aim at improving nutrition in this context. An extensive list of UN resources and policy guidance in support of countries can be found here.