المنتدى العالمي المعني بالأمن الغذائي والتغذية

Dear Luca, the chair of the Open-Ended Working Group on MYPoW

and the members of FSN-Forum,

Firstly, thank you very much for inviting us for the inputs on the "selection and prioritization of the CFS activities for the biennium 2016-17".  Please let me share my little concern to be addressed in the CFS activities as follows:

After the revealation by the Lancet Series in 2008 and in 2013, the global community has taken the agenda of child malnutrition with a very high priority and the most of activities are revolving around this them. The Scaling Up Nutrition, SUN is the global movement, which has reinforced the past efforts in convincing the global and national leaders in investing for this area. As identified by the Lancet studies, the 13 nutrition specific interventions as well as other complementary nutrition sensitive development efforts, which includes nutrition- sensitive agriculture.

Similarly, CFS's vision states " ....The CFS is and remains an intergovernmental Committee in FAO. The reformed CFS as a central component of the evolving Global Partnership for Agriculture, Food Security and Nutrition will constitute the foremost inclusive international and intergovernmental platform for a broad range of committed stakeholders to work together in a coordinated manner and in support of country-led processes towards the elimination of hunger and ensuring food security and nutrition for all human beings........" , which has clearly stipulated the nutritional well-being of all. Now, the global situation urges  us to focus on the nutritional improvement of young children.  

I think, it's a very high time for CFS to reciprocate with the global efforts in nutrition from the part of agriculture to improve the nutrition of women ( pregnant and lactating) and children ( 6-24 m0nths) through  nutrition sensitive agricultural interventions. The existing workstream " Responsible Agriculture Investment (RAI) principle has the essence in broader term. However , it's necessary to make it more specific to make it aligned with the existing global efforts i.e. SUN. I , therefore , propose " Nutrition- Sensitive Agriculture for Improved Nutrition of  Women and Children " as one of the workstreams or  otherwise can be integrated into the existing workstreams. This can include the activities such as :

• -Advocacy to the national governments, development partners, I/NGOs and CBOs/CSOs on nutrition sensitive agricultural investments
• -Coordination all the sectors for converged and comprehensive and nutrition education to the communities
• -Advocacy to the stakeholders to make food consumption in terms of dietary diversity and nutritional indicators as the progress indicators of agricultural projects
• -Advocacy to the stakeholders to increase the supply through value chain development of nutritionally important crops and livestock and at the same time increase the demand by social marketing and intensive nutrition education
• - Putting efforts in scaling up of some of the proven approaches such as Trials of Improved Practices ( TIPs) on nutrition and feeding of children and women as FAO has already tested and has gained a overwhelming acceptance in some countries

Thank you and best regards,