Welcome to United Against Malnutrition & Hunger’s second newsletter. It is your essential resource about the work happening in our alliance and the sector to address the outrage of global malnutrition and hunger, arguably the starkest expression of inequality that there is.
Packed with information, including links to essential briefings and reports, it takes us from May – as the General Election was called – and brings us up to date, with the new Parliament and 335 freshly elected MPs.
It has been a busy period.
In his message from our CEO, Jonny Oates presents his political takeaways on the current state of the fight against malnutrition. He introduces our new co-Chair, Lyn Brown, former Shadow Minister for Africa, and MP for West Ham from 2005-2024, who has come on board to help press for action.
At UAMH we believe that working as an alliance of experts contributing perspectives and circles of influence is the most effective path to tackling global hunger as reflected in our Highlights and events. Read about our lively panel discussions at the Party Conferences, produced in partnership with NGOs and exploring the intersection of hunger with conflict, and with gender. Our diverse collaborations included a Parliamentary roundtable uniting leaders from the worlds of sport, philanthropy, and politics to spotlight maternal nutrition, a showstopping exhibit at the Science Museum, a meeting of minds at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), and much more.
UAMH is fortunate to benefit from the expertise of leaders spanning sectors in our society. In alliance news, we celebrate the support of our Patrons, Lord Boateng, Baroness Featherstone, and Baroness Hodgson of Abinger. Our Expert Advisers provide fresh thinking, and, in this issue, we introduce Professor Bhavani Shankar from the University of Sheffield’s Institute for Sustainable Food who was announced as a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation 2024 Global Goalkeeper Champion. We also hear from Air Marshal (Ret’d) Sir Graham Stacey about his fascinating journey from military peacekeeper to activist against global hunger.
Sir Graham chaired our event at RUSI which captured wisdom from military leaders, NGOs, and MPs as they pondered the key question: how to break the deadly cycle of hunger and conflict. The newsletter links to the Event Report and Recommendations and other new UAMH learning resources including Why nutrition is foundational to development which we co-produced with the Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems.
UAMH provides questions and briefings to Parliamentarians in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. In News and views from Parliament, we express gratitude for all contributions from a committed group of cross-party nutrition champions.
In October, a debate in the House of Lords marked the fortieth anniversary of the famine in Ethiopia, to which Michael Buerk alerted the world in his BBC News broadcast all that time ago.
The bulletin etched into our CEO’s memory at the tender age of fifteen and propelled him on a lifelong journey into international development, a story he recounted to Jeremy Vine on his BBC Radio 2 show. Read about that interview and more in UAMH in the media.
We have been appointed as the Secretariat of the reconstituted All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Nutrition for Development, and as nutrition allies look to opportunities in 2025 to bring nutrition to the front of the political agenda, attention is focused on the Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit in Paris in March. The International Coalition for Advocacy and Nutrition (ICAN) met with the APPG to lay out the Coalition’s recommendations, listed in the newsletter.
As Jonny Oates says, UAMH will continue to urge the UK to “put itself once again at the heart of global efforts to combat malnutrition,” which although preventable, kills more than two million children under five each year, impairs the physical and cognitive development of millions more, and, like a domino of disaster, damages countries, economies, and world security.
Traditionally, at this time of year, people wish each other peace and prosperity.
Let us look to the future. Action to alleviate global hunger is one way to make this wish come true.
Read and download the newsletter here.
