Nutrition

Policies against malnutrition. On July 18th  the summit of the High Level Political Forum of the United Nations Organization that studies the progress of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) for the year 2030, ended. The ministers that make up the Forum concluded that at the current pace the planned goals  will not be met. To change this, they recommended that the UN increase funding lines for programs dedicated to these objectives. Among them, the ones referred to eliminate malnutrition, mitigate climate change and generate working conditions that reduce the wage gap between men and women stand out. This will be one of the most important issue for the next regular session of the UN General Assembly starting on September 18th. There, the Assembly will begin to discuss these recommendations and will consider increasing their funding.

At the summit of the Political Forum that began on July 11th and brought together more than a thousand leaders of governments, companies and civil society, the need to accelerate actions to eliminate malnutrition, mitigate climate change, solve associated problems to the migration and gender inequality that make up the agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) where emphasized. The Forum assured that, at the current rate of progress, the goals will not be met within the foreseen term.

The speakers indicated that there were advances in the SDGs aimed at reducing maternal and child mortality and access to electricity services, among others. However, they highlighted that in other sectors the advances were nil or setbacks. Among them, the 5 percent increase in undernutrition stands out (it increased for the first time in 10 years, from 777 million people in 2015 to 815 million in 2016). They argue that a healthy diet, prioritizing fresh foods, is one of the fundamental instances to combat malnutrition.

Next steps

It is expected that by July 2019, around 125 countries (of the 193 that make up the United Nations Organization) will conduct a Voluntary National Review to diagnose their progress in the SDGs. Until now, there are only 46 countries that have a voluntary review. Seven of them correspond to Latin America (Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Mexico). It is expected that in the following months Argentina, Brazil and Chile, among other governments of the region, will join this study mechanism. From the Forum they consider that this instance of diagnosis is the first step to design promotion plans more efficiently.