Enhancing Maternal and Child Nutrition in External Assistance: an EU Policy Framework.

An EU Policy Framework for Enhancing Maternal and Child Nutrition in External Assistance sets out the primary responsibility of national governments for nutrition, as well as the important role of women and men in developing countries, as drivers of change. The purpose of this policy is to enhance maternal and child nutrition by reducing mortality, morbidity, as well as growth and development deficiencies due to undernutrition. Three strategic priorities for EU's work focusing on maternal and child nutrition are: (I) enhancing mobilization and political commitment for nutrition, (II) scaling up actions at country level, including strengthening human and institutional/system capacity, and increasing interventions specifically designed for nutrition and nutrition-sensitive actions in humanitarian and development settings, and (III) strengthening the expertise and the knowledge base for decision-making and offering technical expertise/assistance.
This policy highlights the need for a better coordination between humanitarian and development aid in order to increase the resilience of affected populations. The humanitarian response to crises will focus on the most vulnerable suffering from, or at risk of suffering from, acute undernutrition. Therefore, special attention will be paid to populations suffering from undernutrition where institutional capacity is weak and frequent disasters or conflict have a devastating effect on the most vulnerable groups as it is the case in fragile countries.
Multi-sectoral approach will be applied to address the various determinants of undernutrition, and nutrition will be integrated as a key objective in rural development and community-based initiatives, sustainable agriculture, fisheries, food security, public and reproductive health, water and sanitation, social protection and education policies. The EU is committed to supporting smallholder agriculture and rural livelihoods, due to the fact that undernutrition is especially severe among poor rural populations and those suffering from discrimination, and the support to smallholder agriculture has the capacity to increase access both of rural and urban poor to nutritious food and to positively impact on livelihoods. Control measures will be strengthened to reduce risks such as an increase in food-borne or water-borne diseases.
This policy underlines the essential role of women, in terms of economic, social, reproductive and domestic roles for food and nutrition security. To this end, gender equality and the empowerment of women will be promoted in all sectors related to nutrition on the basis of the identification of the social determinants of undernutrition. The consistency will be ensured between EU policies that have an impact on food and nutrition security such as trade, climate change, health, environment, employment, etc. A common understanding of the nutrition situation will be developed among humanitarian and development actors to be used as a basis for defining common strategic priorities for programming of humanitarian and development funds. The collaboration with the private sector will be strengthened in a way that promotes responsible business practices. A system will be developed to measure the nutrition outcomes of EU actions, with a specific focus on the reduction of stunting, and to report on the outputs of EU interventions on under-nutrition in humanitarian crises. Moreover, EU system of tracking investments for nutrition will be strengthened to more accurately derive data on the relative spending on nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive approaches.