Galvanizing political commitment in the UN Decade of Action for Nutrition: Assessing commitment in member-countries of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement

Publication date: Available online 25 November 2019Source: Food PolicyAuthor(s): Patrizia Fracassi, Kendra Siekmans, Phillip BakerAbstractIn pursuit of the global ambition of ending all forms of malnutrition, it is important to understand, measure and strengthen political commitment for nutrition. Building commitment involves advocating, establishing institutions, adopting policies, mobilizing resources and coordinating responses – within and outside of government, across sectors, from national to local levels – for as long as necessary to ensure results, sustained over time. As the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement enters its tenth year of existence, this study asks if political commitment for nutrition is evident in the 60 SUN member countries and how this commitment translates into results.Guided by a theoretical framework, we use indicators from the SUN Movement's Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) system to measure five forms of political commitment for nutrition - expressed, institutional, operational, embedded and system-wide - in countries stratified by income and duration of SUN membership. We further determine the association between assessed levels of commitment and progress towards achieving established global nutrition targets. In doing so, we identity important commitment gaps.Results show that countries that joined the SUN Movement early (2010–12) had higher expressed and institutional commitment scores compared with late joiners...
Source: Food Policy - Category: Food Science Source Type: research