2014 Global Nutrition Report: Actions and Accountability to Accelerate the World’s Progress on Nutrition

The Global Nutrition Report (GNR) has produced high quality nutrition profiles of all countries. To download the report for your country, and read the GNR in full, go to http://globalnutritionreport.org

Good nutrition is the bedrock of human well-being and is central to the post 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The GNR is the first in an annual series that tracks worldwide progress in improving nutritional status and contributes to strengthened accountability. Key points from the first report: 

1. People with good nutrition are key to sustainable development. Malnutrition affects nearly every country in the world. More nutrition indicators need to be embedded within the SDG accountability framework.
2. We need to commit to improving nutrition faster and build this goal into the SDG targets for 2030. The targets should be more ambitious than simple extensions of the 2025 World Health Assembly targets. A new consensus about what is possible needs to be established.
3. The world is currently not on course to meet the global nutrition targets set by the World Health Assembly, but many countries are making good progress in the target indicators. More high-quality case studies are needed to understand why progress has or has not been made.
4. Dealing with different, overlapping forms of malnutrition is the “new normal.” Most countries experience some combination of under-five stunting, anaemia in women of reproductive age, and adult overweight. Nutrition resources and expertise need to be better aligned toward the evolving nature of malnutrition.
5. We need to extend coverage of nutrition-specific programmes to more of the people who need them. More attention needs to be given to coverage data – an important way of assessing presence on the ground where it counts.
6. A greater share of investments to improve the underlying determinants of nutrition should be designed to have a larger impact on nutritional outcomes. We need to keep tracking the proportion of nutrition resources to these approaches. We must also provide more guidance on how to design and implement these approaches to improve their effectiveness and reach.
7. More must be done to hold donors, countries, and agencies accountable for meeting their commitments to improve nutrition. Stakeholders should work to develop, pilot, and evaluate new accountability mechanisms. Civil society efforts to increase accountability need support. We need to develop targets or norms for spending on nutrition.
8. Tracking spending on nutrition is currently challenging, making it difficult to hold responsible parties accountable. Efforts to track financial resources need to be intensified­ – for all nutrition stakeholders.
9. Nutrition needs a data revolution. Of the many information gaps, the ones that most need to be filled are those that constrain priority action and impede accountability.
10. National nutrition champions need to be recognized, supported, and expanded in number. We must fill frontline vacancies, support nutrition leadership programmes, and design country-led research programmes.

The second GNR is due out in September 2015. As well as measuring progress during the previous year, the second report will focus in particular on food systems, climate and business. We will profile this on the ENN website when it is published.