Call for Support: UNSCN and Global Nutrition Leadership
Sabrina Ionata de Oliveira
Dear colleagues,
This e-mail comes to you because the global nutrition agenda needs your urgent attention and action.
For more than 3 decades, the United Nations Standing Committee on Nutrition (UNSCN) has been the main policy harmonisation forum for promoting debates, sharing of experiences and engaging a range of stakeholders on malnutrition related issues though a wide range of activities.
The SCN was created in 1977 to serve as a point of convergence for the UN system in the area of nutrition and food and nutrition policy, ensuring that the systemwide response is indeed greater than the sum of the individual efforts. No one will deny there has been challenges, which led to the decision to reform the SCN and calls for an overhaul of the international nutrition architecture. But the current situation is that the UNSCN is at great risk of being disbanded, with no plans for new institutional arrangements that would serve as the nutrition institutional leader.
This means that the nutrition community is at risk of finding itself homeless, without any forum at the UN level that makes nutrition its single priority. As unprecedented collective efforts and mobilisation from donor countries, countries with a high undernutrition burden, private sector, civil society organizations and UN agencies unfold through the SUN, more than never there is a need for a strong, transparent, sustainable and accountable institution within the UN system that will put forward and scale up the global efforts against malnutrition in all its forms.
This is not about saving the SCN, it is about catalysing, fostering and leading efforts and action on nutrition through a robust, inclusive, transparent and multi-stakeholder mechanism. Without the SCN or a new body mandates to provide leadership, promote policy convergence and create synergies across sectors, we will fail to deliver on our commitment to achieve nutrition security for all.
Two open letters have been sent to Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary-General: one by Dr. Ted Greiner (available here) and one by Dr. Boyd Swinburn (here, see bottom of the page).
But this is not enough. More needs to be done.
HOW YOU CAN HELP
By sending an e-mail to the UN Secretary-General, Dr Ban Ki-moon: sgce...@un.org
You can copy and paste the following message:
Subject: We ASK you in favour of the UNSCN, for a functional global institutional arrangement for nutrition
Dear Secretary General Ban Ki-moon,
We would like to ask you to use your unique authority to ensure now that nutrition, and the fight against malnutrition in all its forms, has the same level of importance within the UN system as other important impediments to human development, for example maternal and child health, malaria and climate change. So we ask you to take the lead now, dramatically, to strengthen the UN institutional arrangements for nutrition. We suggest that you do this by establishing, convening and chairing a committee at pan-UN level, whose members are the heads of all relevant UN agencies, to ensure this.
The Standing Committee on Nutrition can and should be part of this highest level structure. The UNSCN has already been set up to involve and engage all constituencies committed to improve nutrition, including the academic community, foundations, health professional and civil society organisations, and also those parts of the private sector with no conflicted interests. We think this will be generally welcomed within and outside the nutrition community, and will send the signal round the world that now most needs to be heard, most of all in Africa and by parents and children everywhere.
I really appreciate you sharing this with your co-workers, friends, colleagues, family, students, professors, and in any social networks that you are part of. Please spread the word.
It is a chance to show your concern, and give your concrete contribution to improve the UN System and help the global efforts on nutrition.
Thank you a lot.
Sabrina
Sabrina Ionata de Oliveira
Nutritionist
MSc Social Policy & Social Research
University of Southampton, UK
Skype me: sabrina.ionata
Sabrina Ionata de Oliveira
Dear all,
Thank you for those who have already replied me in support of the cause.
First of all, I would like to clarify that this is not an action of the UNSCN Secretariat in any way. Copies of my e-mail have already reached them and they appreciate the support, but it is necessary to have it clear that this is my own personal initiative, as a public health nutritionist standing against the current happenings in the UN system.
Second thing is: does anybody else have other social networks where we could share this? Would you be willing to share this on Twitter, Facebook, etc?
Thanks a lot,
Sabrina