122 posts categorized "Maternal and Child Nutrition"

Good news for data nerds: The OECD has just released its latest disposable income, poverty and inequality numbers for all of its 34 member states. You can access the entire data set here, but don't miss the the fun interacive tools that were released along with it. OECD was kind enought to make them embeddable:

So what are the key stories in this beautifully arranged chart? You may not find them all that surprising:

• Poverty and  inequality have grown in OECD countries since the global recession of 2007-2008.
• The United States still has greater-than-average inequality and relative poverty than the typical OECD country.
• The United States has less pre-tax/transfer poverty than most other countries.
• The overall OECD unemployment rate has eased slightly to 8.0%.
• Iceland, Slovenia, Norway and Denmark shared the lowest poverty rate of member countries, while Israel bore the highest at 21%.

This data release is well timed, just before the 39^th G-8 summit to be held in Lough Erne, Northern Ireland between June 17-18. As member states gather to focus on shared global development goals like advancing trade, ensuring tax compliance, and promoting greater transparency, the OECD offers a humbling reminder that poverty, hunger, and inequality are on the rise across the developed world. A global committment to solving the poverty problem will require committment from all countries, regardless of income level. This is still everyone's problem.

In my last blog I mentioned that we now know what malnutrition is and what to do to overcome it. Much has been written about the “1,000-day window of opportunity,” the period from a woman’s pregnancy to her child’s second birthday. A growing body of scientific evidence shows that malnutrition during this critical time can carry lifelong consequences for a person’s health, education and earnings. When chronic malnutrition affects a large number of people, it can even affect a country’s economy.

The better news is that interventions to prevent and treat malnutrition during the 1,000-day window are not only highly effective, but also great investments in development, with very high returns for every dollar invested. Since nutrition is an integral part of all development sectors, it is often referred to as being “cross-sectoral” in nature. It means that improving a person’s health, or education, or economic situation can have a positive, sustainable influence on malnutrition. Improving nutrition isn’t just about growing more food or having better access to food anymore.

So, if we know what malnutrition is and what actions are required to defeat it, and if we have shown that investing in nutrition is a smart thing to do, what is holding back “scaling up” nutrition on a global scale?  The Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement now includes 35 countries, all with high levels of malnutrition. Even though some SUN members are among the poorest countries in the world, every SUN country has committed political and financial resources to take action against malnutrition. Could it be that a country’s commitment to fighting hunger and malnutrition is what is important?

What if an index of a country’s commitment was available to help measure and motivate concerted action?  The Institute of Development Studies in the United Kingdom, along with the British and Irish aid agencies, has produced just such an index, called the Hunger and Nutrition Commitment Index (HANCI). Last year, the International Food and Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) noted in its Global Hunger Index that in recent years, progress in reducing hunger has been “worryingly slow.” The report found that in many developing countries, significant economic growth has not necessarily led to lower levels of malnutrition and hunger. Rather, a driving factor in making (or not making) progress on malnutrition seems to be a government’s political will (or lack thereof).

The Global Hunger Index treats efforts to reduce hunger and to reduce malnutrition as separate issues. Hunger is a key driver of migration, conflict, and gender discrimination. Malnutrition, the report found, can have different causes and consequences. It does not always come directly from hunger. One example of another cause is an impaired ability to absorb vitamins and minerals (micronutrients) due to disease.

So which countries are doing well according to the HANCI?  The results indicate that Guatemala ranks at the top and Guinea Bissau (a small West African nation) at the bottom. The index provides an interesting set of information graphics that can be studied. Guatemala has made a substantial political commitment to improving access to clean drinking water, ensuring improved sanitation, promoting complementary feeding practices, and investing in health interventions. I’ve blogged previously about its “Zero Hunger Plan.” Guinea Bissau, on the other hand, has a low ranking because it has failed to invest in agriculture, leaving women in particular vulnerable to hunger and malnutrition; in addition, the country has not yet developed effective safety nets that can provide its citizens with a measure of food security.

In recent years, we’ve seen a truly incredible level of global momentum on nutrition. But how are the major donors doing when it comes to following through on their political commitments to ending hunger and malnutrition?  Where would the United States, Canada, Australia, and the EU rank on the HANCI? Do these governments endorse policies and provide funding for programs that augment the efforts of the developing countries most affected by hunger, chronic food insecurity, and malnutrition?

A series of events in June 2013 will help answer these questions, indicating whether donor governments are “walking the walk” -- or just talking -- about their commitment to nutrition.

First, in London on June 8, the U.K. government will host the “Nutrition for Growth” event, during which governments will pledge specific monetary amounts to help scale up nutrition. Following this, during Bread’s National Gathering, we are hosting an event in Washington, DC, called “Sustaining Political Commitments to Scaling Up Nutrition”, to build on our very successful 2011 event. The Call to Action will bring 40 civil society representatives from SUN countries to discuss SUN’s next steps -- and what’s needed to carry them out -- with U.S. government officials, non-governmental organization nutrition stakeholders, and others, including Bread’s grassroots activists who will be in Washington, DC, for the National Gathering. Participants will be able to judge for themselves whether the U.S. government is “walking the walk” on its commitment to ending malnutrition, particularly among women and children.

Stay tuned to this space and the Bread for the World blog for more information.

Scott Bleggi is Senior International Policy Analyst in Bread for the World Institute

By Anna Wiersma

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were proposed at the Rio+20 Summit in 2012 as one way to extend the work of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) beyond 2015. The SDGs are intended to compensate for the lack of focus on climate change, biodiversity loss, and other environmental problems missing from the MDG framework. Table 3.1 shows the proposed SDG focus areas alongside the existing MDGs.

Comparing the proposed focus areas of the SDGs alongside those of the MDGs.

The proposed SDG framework includes both opportunities and challenges for anti-poverty efforts. With any expansion of goals comes the risk of losing clarity and ocus. Each of the MDGs has a direct link to the goal of ending poverty. The proposed SDG focus areas do not include important ways of fighting poverty—ways that go beyond simply providing food—such as education, empowering women, improving child and maternal health and nutrition, and fighting HIV/AIDS.

In spite of these concerns, elements of the SDG agenda could well enhance future anti-poverty efforts. Climate change affects poor people disproportionately, and feeding a rapidly rising global population will require more sustainable forms of agriculture.

Expanding the post-2015 development agenda to address the urgent problems posed by climate change and the need for sustainable food production should not come at the cost of losing the focus on key health, education, and equality issues or the overall clear anti-poverty message. Finding a balance that includes both these essential elements of the MDGs and the essentials of the SDG agenda is the challenge, particularly with numerous stakeholders already vying to shape the SDG agenda and the relationship between the SDGs and MDGs. But just as the MDGs brought global attention to the fight against poverty, the SDGs could serve as a platform for the need to act on climate change.

Anna Wiersma  is a senior at Valparaiso University in Indiana pursuing a degree in international economics and cultural affairs. She was a summer 2012 intern in Bread for the World’s government relations department.

This exerpt is borrowed from the 2013 Hunger Report, Within Reach: Global Development Goals. Visit hungerreport.org to learn more about the MDGs, sustainable development, and the post-2015 agenda. 

It’s easy to forget that hunger and malnutrition are still big problems here in the Western Hemisphere. The focus tends to be on countries in Africa and South Asia, where malnourished women and children are more visible and international organizations more active. In previous posts on Institute Notes, I’ve written about traveling to Guatemala and described efforts now under way to reduce the country’s stubbornly high rates of maternal/child malnutrition.

Today 1,000 children will be born in Guatemala. If the past predicts the future, half of these babies will grow up stunted (far too short for their age). Stunting causes children to be more susceptible to illness and less likely to do well in school. People who are stunted have lower lifetime earnings than their peers, and they are more likely to raise stunted children themselves. Does this make you a little angry?  When a national survey in Guatemala revealed that less than 1 percent of the respondents thought malnutrition was a problem in the country, it angered President Perez Molina more than a little. He ordered every member of his cabinet to spend time living with a family facing chronic food shortages and malnutrition. Many such families are indigenous Guatemalans in difficult to reach mountainous regions.

It didn’t stop with the cabinet. In the end, 6,212 middle- and high-income Guatemalans -- officials, families, members of church and civil society groups -- connected with some of the poorest people in their country. The result was a nationwide commitment to break the cycle of malnutrition and stunting. It’s an ambitious goal in the sense that malnutrition is an entrenched problem that has persisted for decades despite earlier attempts to solve it. In a country whose president is limited to one term (four years), it has proven difficult to muster the political will to initiate actions that might not be sustained. But the Perez Molina administration reconvened after the rural visits to launch a concerted nationwide effort to scale up nutrition in Guatemala. The Zero Hunger Pact was born.

“Zero Hunger” has two main goals:  to reduce chronic malnutrition among children by 10 percent and to prevent deaths caused by acute malnutrition by focusing on seasonal hunger (the spike in hunger that generally comes just prior to harvest time). A series of specific actions to combat malnutrition and to encourage people to participate have been developed. The pact’s other areas of focus are to include promoting development and fighting poverty, especially among indigenous rural women. Activities have now begun in various parts of the country, and plans call for expansion in 2014 and 2015.

Last week, I attended a meeting about the Zero Hunger Pact at the State Department, along with Guatemalan government leaders; the State Department’s Acting Special Representative for Global Food Security, Jonathan Shrier; and USAID’s Assistant to the Administrator for the Bureau of Food Security, Paul Weisenfeld. With the strong backing of Guatemala’s president, leaders from government, the private sector, nongovernmental organizations, and civil society are working together on a plan to make sustainable improvements in nutrition.

Guatemala has been active in the global Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement, which now brings together 34 countries committed to improving maternal and child nutrition. The world now knows what to do and how to do it. What Guatemala has added is political will at its highest level, a national budget allocation, and public commitment.

The Zero Hunger Pact says it best:

“Today we dare dream about a different Guatemala, in which children with smiles are free from hunger and reach their full potential. We have launched the process of change and as a society we are ready to pay the cost for reaching our collective success. What used to divide us, brings us together now in the fight for one single cause:  to eradicate malnutrition.”

So with this blog we can salute Guatemala for its efforts, along with other SUN Movement countries who are making political decisions and changing government policies to reduce malnutrition.

  Scott Bleggi is Senior International Policy Analyst in Bread for the World Institute

At Bread for the World Institute, we look closely at the causes of hunger so that we can recommend effective responses. Some causes are apparent –- for example, poverty and armed conflict. Others may be less obvious but nonetheless important. One of the latter is gender-based violence.

All over the world, violence and the threat of violence limit women’s freedom of movement and economic opportunities. Whether a woman must leave her market kiosk early to avoid groups of men out for the evening, flee her home with only the clothes she’s wearing to escape domestic abuse, or pass up the chance for higher education because it would mean traveling alone to classes and risking assault or worse -- gender-based violence makes it harder for women to feed themselves and their children.

In December 2012, India made global headlines because of a brutal gang rape on a public bus, the resulting mass protests in New Delhi and other cities, and even more widespread demonstrations when the victim died days later. On the other hand, India is also the birthplace of the "Ring the Bell" campaign – a male-led effort, active for five years now, that encourages men to step forward to help end gender-based violence. “Ringing the bell” is a simple action that men are urged to take whenever they hear or witness violence against women: ring the doorbell. In other words, interrupt the assault -- on any pretext, however flimsy. Let the man know that other men in his community are willing to intervene to stop gender-based violence. The idea is basic, but it has profound implications. It seeks to "make what was once acceptable unacceptable."

Since 2008, the original Hindi-language campaign, Bell Bajao, has reached more than 130 million people in India via TV and radio ads that explain why gender-based violence cannot be tolerated and how to help stop it. The campaign points out: "For domestic violence to stop, men who are violent must be empowered to make different choices." Each year, “video buses” air short videos featuring true stories of men who took action based on Bell Bajao's message. The buses travel thousands of miles, reaching people village by village. The Bell Bajao campaign has been featured in the storylines of India's leading soap operas and included in national quiz shows – just two among many signs of rising public awareness.

Ring the Bell's core theme will sound familiar to Bread members: it's the power of one individual, committed to taking action, to create change. Ring the Bell offers suggestions for actions, a variety of ways an individual can pledge to make a difference. For example: teach boys who look up to you that strong men respect women; intervene to stop any abuse you hear of in your neighborhood and extended family; donate time or resources to a shelter for rape survivors or battered wives.

On International Women’s Day 2013 (March 8), Ring the Bell became a global campaign. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is its inaugural Global Champion, while the Clinton Global Initiative is providing financial support. The goal: to get 1 million men to make 1 million promises to take action against gender-based violence by March 2014.

Here's one of the key reasons that broad social change through campaigns such as Ring the Bell must accompany better laws and stronger enforcement of those laws: Globally, the single strongest predictor of a man’s violence against a partner is having witnessed violence during childhood against his mother. (Source: U.N. Women). It's a cycle that must be interrupted one family, village, and town at a time.

Among the many benefits of reducing gender-based violence will be more food grown and more income earned by women -- simply because they can go to school, work, and raise their children in greater peace.

 Ring the Bell is a project of Breakthrough TV. Banner above courtesy Breakthrough TV.

  Michele Learner is associate editor for Bread for the World Institute.

Although each of the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is important, some include more specifics than others. MDG 3 is to "promote gender equality" -- quite a sweeping task-- but its specific targets and indicators focus mainly on gender parity in education (at all levels -- primary, secondary, and tertiary) and a related indicator, the ratio of literate women to men in the age group 15 to 24. It's clear that education for girls is critically important and leads to improvements both in women's own lives and those of their children. By itself, though, gender parity in education is not enough to achieve gender equality. 

Yet gender equality is not only a core development objective, it is also smart economics. Empowered women and men can improve a society's productivity, offer their children greater opportunities, and make institutions more representative. It benefits everyone.

Bread for the World Institute's 2013 Hunger Report,  Within Reach: Global Development Goals emphasizes both the intrinsic value and instrumental value of gender equality. Today, we know that removing barriers that prevent women from having the same access as men to education, economic opportunities, and productive inputs can generate broad based productivity gains -- gains all the more important in an increasingly competitive society. Additionally, leveling the playing field so that women and men have equal chances to actively engage socially and politically -- to make decisions and shape policies -- is likely to lead over time to more representative, and more inclusive institutions and policy responses.

Staggering evidence based on the upcoming 2012 Global Food Policy Report of the  International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) reveals that almost 55 percent of the reduction in hunger from 1970 to 1995 can be attributed to improvements in women’s status in society. Additionally, it is estimated that global malnutrition could be reduced by 12 percent to 17 percent if gender barriers were eliminated and women farmers were able to match the yields of male farmers.

It is true that the lives of girls and women have changed dramatically over the past 50 years. While the pace of change has been astonishing in some areas, in other areas, progress toward gender equality has been limited — even in developed countries.

Photo Credit: FAO-IFAD-WFP

What is also becoming increasingly clear is that income growth by itself does not deliver greater gender equality on all fronts. In fact, where gender gaps have closed quickly, it is because of how institutions and markets — both formal and informal—have functioned and evolved, how growth has played out, and how all these factors have interacted through household decisions. For example, how has the global progress in girls' education come about? A combination of factors -- income growth (which loosens budget constraints), markets (which open new employment opportunities for women), and formal institutions (which expand school systems and lower costs) -- came together in a broad range of countries to influence household decisions in favor of educating girls and young women.

So is women's empowerment important? Yes -- in order to achieve the MDGs, we must redouble our commitment to support women and girls in achieving their full potential. We need to prioritize MDG 3 alongside the other seven goals.

Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do-- Johann Wolfgang

   Faustine Wabwire is senior foreign assistance policy analyst at Bread for the World Institute.

International Women’s Day on March 8 kicked off a conversation about the progress being made in improving nutrition among vulnerable groups such as pregnant women and young children. For good reason, much of the U.S. development assistance for nutrition is focused on the 1,000-day “window of opportunity” from a woman’s pregnancy to her child’s second birthday. Improvements in nutrition during this period can benefit children for a lifetime.

But “breaking the cycle” of poverty, hunger, and malnutrition is difficult for structural, economic, political, and social reasons. Poorly nourished women are more likely to give birth to low birth weight babies who often do less well in school and suffer lifelong health problems. The cycle continues when this generation has its own babies, particularly among girls who give birth when they are still at too young an age. In many countries this cycle has continued for generations, especially among vulnerable groups such as ethnic minorities and those who live in remote, hard to reach areas. During my visit last year to Bangladesh, I saw some of these problems but I also noticed signs that the situation is improving. Two factors that are helping are better educational opportunities for girls and women, and a trend toward smaller families. Fewer children generally means more food and better nutrition – it’s more likely that there will be enough food left over for a youngest daughter, even in cultures where men, boys, and older girls eat first.

A Bangladeshi mother and daughter at a health clinic.  Photo: Todd Post

In South Asia, many women and girls are chronically ill due to a lack of proper nutrition. There are several contributing factors: poverty; lack of proper health care; malnutrition early in life, which leaves its survivors more susceptible to disease; lack of nutritional knowledge; and patriarchal family structures that may relegate girls and women to eating only whatever is left over or primarily less nutritious foods. Ambassador David Lane, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Agencies for Food and Agriculture, recently mentioned the “3 A’s” that affect both the quantity and quality of food consumption. These are availability of a nutritious and diverse supply of food, access to it (it’s better not to be that youngest daughter), and absorption of vitamins and minerals. He called for a multisectoral strategy to find solutions in these three areas.

The impact of all the various factors that make young women likely to be malnourished and chronically ill come to a head during pregnancy -- one of the most vulnerable times in a person’s life. About 60 percent of South Asian women in their childbearing years are underweight due partly to a lack of proper nutrition during their own childhoods. Also, eight out of 10 South Asian women are anemic (lack iron) during pregnancy, and many suffer from chronic energy deficit (lack of sufficient calories).

A lack of adequate nutritional knowledge is a big contributor to malnutrition, carrying with it the risk of improper cooking methods, poor hygiene, and too little variety in the diet. Also a major contributor is a lack of resources to prepare food using safe water and to purchase and consume a variety of fruits, vegetables, and protein-rich foods. Development assistance programs that recognize the important role of nutrition in various sectors, such as agriculture, health, and gender, offer countries an opportunity to educate families so that the cycle of malnutrition can be broken rather than repeated.

  Scott Bleggi is Senior International Policy Analyst in Bread for the World Institute

Today, March 8, marks International Women’s Day. Readers of this blog, I suspect, almost automatically think of somewhere outside the United States—but it’s worth considering why International Women’s Day is relevant right here in our own country.

2013 is the anniversary of Betty Freidan’s celebrated manifesto The Feminine Mystique, turning 50 this year.  1963 was still a time when a book could create a seismic (and reverberating) shock in American culture. Like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, which set off the U.S. environmental movement, The Feminine Mystique had a similar effect in launching the “second wave” women’s movement of the 1960s. The first was the battle for women’s suffrage, which was the issue 100 years ago.

Indeed, women have come a long way since the release of The Feminine Mystique, but probably no one is under any illusion that equality of the sexes has been reached. Sexism and racism are often spoken in one breath to convey that equality remains a work in progress. Consider the workplace. Women earn 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man—much less if the woman belongs to a minority group.  African American women earn about a dime less than white women, and Hispanic women another dime less than African American women.

The poorest women in the workforce still face some of the worst discrimination—and a lot of it is legal!  For example, the federal minimum wage for tipped workers—mostly servers in restaurants—is $2.13 per hour. The tipped wage has been frozen at $2.13 for 21 years. More than two-thirds of tipped workers are women. Here’s a surprise: they experience poverty at almost three times the rate of the workforce as a whole.

In his State of the Union address last month, President Obama called for raising the minimum wage to $9.00 an hour. The current minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is almost impossible to live on, but at least it reflects small increases in 2007, 2008 and 2009. Raising the minimum wage to $9.00 would help many workers, although a full-time minimum-wage worker with two children would still be living in poverty. (She would earn $18,720 a year, with the 2013 poverty threshold for a family of three set at $19,530). But raising the minimum wage would not help tipped workers, because they are in a “special category” exempt from minimum wage legislation.  

Over the last 50 years, women have opened some doors that were closed before. There are more women who serve in Congress, run companies, lead universities, and head up nonprofits. Some are earning less than equally successful men, but at least at these salary levels, the gap is more galling than frightening. At the bottom of the labor market, however, earning 23 percent less than a male peer is the difference between being able to feed your kids for the whole month and going without food for the last week. That’s just one of the important reasons to consider how International Women’s Day applies to the United States rather than only to developing countries.

Farmers such as this Zambian worker feed most people in the developing world. Photo by Margaret W. Nea for Bread for the World.

 International Women's Day is coming right up: this Friday, March 8. 

Of course, every other day of the year is also women's day, just as every day is men's day and children's day. Yet sometimes even seasoned advocates who approach hunger holistically -- recognizing it as the multidimensional problem it is -- are guilty of putting "gender" or "women's issues" in a separate box from other development sectors.

Granted, it's an important box, increasingly stuffed with worthwhile things -- the 1,000 Days campaign to prevent malnutrition among pregnant women and young children, literacy and bookkeeping classes for small business owners, campaigns against child marriage and maternal mortality, and many more. But nonetheless, it's a box.

Female farmers produce well over half of all the food grown in the world, and worldwide, the major responsibility for providing for families falls to women. But few female farmers own the land they work, have the authority to make decisions about crops and livestock, or control their own incomes. The box separates these "women's empowerment" issues from other parts of the solution to hunger, such as agriculture. Sure, there are programs for "women farmers," but this is often viewed as a matter of equal opportunity. Crop research, extension services, training in newer or more productive growing and harvesting methods, and a host of other agricultural programs are for "farmers." We don't see a term such as "men farmers" very often -- because the pervasive assumption is that "farmers" are men.

It's an assumption that can literally be seen in fields around the world, reflected in a basic hand tool: the hoe. As it turns out, women work more effectively with hoes that are not only lighter weight, but have longer handles than those intended for “everyone.” But these are in short supply.

It's an assumption that costs the world dearly -- in hunger, malnutrition, and all their consequences. The Institute's new resource, "Development Works: Myths and Realities," points out that according to the 2012 Africa Human Development Report, gender bias is a "principal cause" of hunger in Africa. A principal cause of hunger -- not something that has solutions separate from sectors such as agriculture.

Yesterday, Olivier de Schutter, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, released a report on women's rights and the right to food. He points out in  "The Feminization of Farming," in The New York Times of March 3, that women have a heavy burden of unpaid work -- cooking, cleaning, child care, fetching water, etc., that "result in lost opportunities for women, who don’t have the time to attend classes, travel to markets to sell produce, or do other activities to improve their economic prospects."

De Schutter sums up his argument: "The most effective strategies to empower women who tend farm and family — and to alleviate hunger in the process — are to remove the obstacles that hinder them from taking charge of their lives." 

That's what International Women's Day is all about. And that's why we can't view gender and agriculture as separate but equal spheres.