On 15 June 2020, the FAO Representative and the Deputy Head of Mission of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany to Cambodia, who are Co-Facilitators of the Technical Working Group for Social Protection and Food Security and Nutrition (TWG SP & FSN), as well as representatives of the SUN UN Network, the SUN Civil Society Alliance for Cambodia and the FAO-EU FIRST Programme, met with Deputy Prime Minister and Chairman of the Council for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD). The meeting was to discuss a joint statement which called for prioritizing nutrition in the national COVID-19 response.

H.E. Deputy Prime Minister Yim Chhay Ly, Chairman of CARD and the Co-Facilitators of the TWG SP & FSN signed a joint statement, which appealed to all line ministries, institutions sub-national authorities, development partners, civil society and the private sector to work with cohesion within each sector. The statement sought technical and financial support for the implementation of the joint priority actions under the Second five-Year Strategy for Food Security and Nutrition (2^nd NSFSN) 2019-2023 in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This joint statement came in response to the Asia and Pacific joint statement released in April 2020 by the regional heads of FAO, UNICEF, WFP and WHO. The regional joint statement offered an important resource to help ensure that nutrition is adequately addressed in the national COVID-19 responses.

The six domains proposed in the regional joint statement include: (i) Ensure healthy diet by keeping food supply chains moving and ensuring availability of nutritious foods; (ii) Ensure maternal, infant and young child nutrition by making sure that health services continues to provide nutrition services for pregnant and breastfeeding mothers, newborns and sick children; (iii) Ensure management of wasting by maintaining and adapting life-saving services to treat both wasted children and undernourished mothers; (iv) Ensure micronutrient supplementation by ensuring that programmes to prevent and control micronutrient deficiencies should be continued as far as possible during routine services for pregnant women and young children; (v) Adopting new ways to continue enabling the school feeding and nutrition projects; and, (vi) Establish national nutrition surveillance.   

Having acknowledged these valuable guidelines, the agency heads at country level have reviewed the relevance and the effectiveness of the Second Five-Year Strategy for Food Security and Nutrition (2^nd NSFSN), 2019-2023 in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. In general, the six domains raised in the regional joint statement are addressed by the 2^nd Five-Year NSFSN 2019-2023, although implementation and surveillance capacities need additional support.

In addition, the TWG SP & FSN recommends that special consideration should be given to Nutrition Sensitive WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene), to ensure that Cambodian people have access to hand-washing with soap and clean water, as a protection against the spread of the COVID-19 and to minimize the spread of gastrointestinal diseases and parasites, so that the available nutrients can be absorbed effectively.

Globally, the COVID-19 pandemic poses unprecedented challenges, both in terms of direct health risks as well as in term of the economic impact of containment measures in place to curb the spread of the virus. In Cambodia, to date, the health impacts have been well contained, though the spread of the virus continues to remain a concern.

However, as emphasized by Mr Alexandre Huynh, FAO Representative in Cambodia and Co-Facilitator of the TWG SP & FSN, “the economic impacts of the global COVID-19 pandemic in Cambodia affect many vulnerable groups of people, such as poor households, informal workers, young children, pregnant and lactating women. The disruption in their daily businesses due to COVID-19 affects their income, resulting in unstable support for their nutritional needs.”

Mr Benjamin Knoedler, Deputy Head of Mission, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Cambodia and Co-Facilitator of the TWG SP & FSN also emphasized that, “The adaptation of the food security and nutrition strategy in the context of COVID-19 is a fundamental step we have achieved. Today’s discussion and the signing of the joint statement signified our close collaboration for the implementation of actions to address those identified priorities.” 

On behalf of the United Nations Network for Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN), the Country Director of WFP, Ms Francesca Erdelmann, highlighted that Cambodia’s priorities align well with the UN’s global guidance on food security and nutrition in context of COVID19, which calls for life saving support, strengthened social protection and building a sustainable future. She stressed the importance of continued monitoring of people’s access to an affordable nutritious diet and essential services. Examples of ongoing actions include the national IDPoor cash transfer, which takes into consideration essential food needs, and take-home rations which replace school meals during school closures. Health and nutrition are important considerations in back-to-school guidelines.

Ms Gwyneth Cotes, representing the SUN Civil Society Alliance, led by Helen Keller International, also updated the meeting on key actions undertaken on the ground by nutrition focused NGOs to help address the problems. She asked all parties to pay particular attention to the importance of exclusive breast feeding for infants from birth through to six months of age, and of the need for vigilance in supervising the marketing of breast milk substitutes in Cambodia.

H.E. Deputy Prime Minister Yim Chhay Ly, mentioned that CARD will share this important joint statement with all relevant ministries such as the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF), the Ministry of Health (MoH), the Ministry of Rural Development (MRD), the Ministry of Interior (MoI), and local authorities across the 25 municipal and provincial administrations, as well as other relevant ministries as needed.

Regarding the way forward, H.E. Yim Chhay Ly also provided some key recommendations to effectively support the vulnerable groups to meet their nutritional needs and actions needed to support this statement as follows:

• In collaboration with CARD Secretariat-General as the TWG-SP&FSN’s Secretary, The Co-Facilitators of the TWG SP & FSN are to cooperate with relevant development partners to prepare short- and long-term action plans in response to the impacts of COVID-19 on food security and nutrition in alignment with the 2^nd Five-Year NSFSN,2019-2023.
• CARD is to continue closely monitoring the impacts and the response efforts of all relevant stakeholders and other ministries.
• Development partners to continue supporting CARD technically and financially to ensure efficient implementation of the 2^nd Five-Year NSFSN 2019-2023.  
• Under the difficult circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, CARD is not able to organize a regular TWG meeting as we have to meet every 3 months. Therefore, the TWG SP & FSN meeting should be conducted with a small group for the purpose of sharing information and finding solutions for the implementation of FSN policy. 
• For other technical meetings on FSN that need the participation from stakeholders, such as the FSN Forum, CARD should organize those meetings online.