Nongovernmental groups in Elandsdoorn, South Africa, have combined efforts to help this boy and others from poor families receive nutritional meals and educational support

By Charlene Porter
IIP Staff Writer
21 September 2011

Washington — An international campaign to boost nutrition for mothers and children is making progress toward fulfilling the Millennium Development Goal to halve hunger worldwide by 2015. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton joined U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other world leaders at a September 20 event marking the achievements of the Scale Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement.

“The lives of millions of children are at stake,” said Ban, who hosted the New York event on the fringes of the U.N. General Assembly session. “We can help them realize their physical and intellectual potential.”

The SUN Movement provides support and resources for countries that have committed to a new drive to achieve better nutrition.

Secretary Clinton attended the event to applaud the progress and recommit the United States to helping nations striving to boost nutrition.

“The United States is firmly committed to our investments in global nutrition,” Clinton said. “And we believe fervently that improving nutrition for pregnant women and children under 2 is one of the smartest investments we or anyone can make.”

Clinton said U.S. government funding for global nutrition has more than doubled, from $35 million in 2007 to $90 million in 2011, inching up even while the nation is weathering an economic downturn.

Ban said the SUN Movement supports countries in their efforts to enhance the nutritional content of diets generally, and particularly for pregnant mothers. Clinton said SUN is different from other assistance programs because its leadership remains at the local level.

“We are seeing better results with country-owned leadership,” she said. “When results are measured transparently and are used to improve strategies, and when all parties are held accountable for delivering on their promises, we actually can see the progress being made.”

Clinton praised Tanzania, Guatemala, Uganda, Peru, Mozambique and Burkina Faso for introducing accountability and reforms in nutrition programs, and for creating political leadership that enables the success of nutrition programs on a broad scale.

The SUN Movement is working in tandem with the 1,000 Days campaign, which is another malnutrition initiative backed by the U.S. State Department and several nongovernmental organizations. This campaign is oriented toward raising awareness of the critical importance of adequate nutrition in an infant’s first 1,000 days, a period that influences an individual’s development and achievement throughout the remainder of life.

Helping individuals everywhere begin life with a healthy start is a goal underpinning other Obama administration initiatives, Clinton said, including Feed the Future and the Global Health Initiative.

“That means building clinics that help expectant mothers enrich their diets and those of their babies,” she said. Feed the Future will help farmers produce more robust corps, “not just filling stomachs but really helping to create healthier people.”

Clinton said the United States is advancing this two-track aid strategy in the Horn of Africa today. The more than $600 million in the U.S. commitment is being used to meet immediate needs, Clinton said, but a portion is also being devoted to “long-term investments in food security to try to avoid such crises in the future.”
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