In succession, the impassioned speakers addressed the audience of ambassadors, parliamentarians – among them an APPG on Nutrition for Development delegation from Westminster – alongside Olympic and Paralympic medallists, and leaders from business, philanthropy, and civil society. All gathered at Malnutrition: A Global Issue, a Collective Response at the Assemblée Nationale.
The reception marked little more than one month before Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Paris on 27 and 28 March. A critical four-yearly summit to tackle global malnutrition.
Earlier that day, the APPG’s Co-Chairs David Mundell, Conservative MP for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale, and Tweeddale, and Steve Race, Labour MP for Exeter, arrived in Paris. With them was Lord Jonny Oates, CEO of United Against Malnutrition & Hunger, which provides the Secretariat for the APPG. All were prepared for a whistle stop schedule of meetings with French MPs and officials keen to discuss efforts to confront the escalating global malnutrition crisis.
A crisis the Minister Delegate to the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, Thani Mohamed-Soilihi, described as a “plague from which 140 million children are suffering.”
Good nutrition is the key to breaking the cycle of poverty, the Minister said. “It plays an essential role in eleven [of the seventeen] Sustainable Development Goals.”
Yet malnutrition is soaring and is the biggest killer of children under five. The figures are staggering. Two hundred and eighty-two million people in 59 countries and territories experienced high levels of acute hunger in 2023 – a worldwide increase of 24 million from 2022, according to the World Food Programme.
The call for urgent, overdue action was echoed throughout the reception, hosted by Global Health Advocates, UNICEF France, and Éléonore Caroit MP from the governing Renaissance Party, who said, “The issue should be important for every politician,” and thanked the British delegation for coming.
Vaccines are less effective in malnourished children, who are 11 times more likely to die from infectious diseases, a point made by Dr Sania Nishtar, Executive Director of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. She drew on her experience, including as a former Minister in Pakistan, recounting how she frequently observed that the same children were out of school and malnourished.
“An integrated approach is vital when addressing malnutrition,” she said, pledging to leverage opportunities to integrate nutrition into vaccination programmes.
This integrative approach has interest from the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO).
Far less encouraging is rapidly diminishing ODA (Official Development Assistance). Adeline Hazan, the President of UNICEF France, spoke of her alarm about the drop in France’s international development budget. Nutrition is a primary children’s right, she said.
A shrinking foreign aid budget is a concurrent reality in the UK, where nutrition champions are reeling from the UK Government’s announcement that it will cut ODA to just 0.3% of GNI by 2027.
Hunger, when the brain is developing, has cognitive consequences, as Adeline Hazan said. “Without food, there is no health and no education. Now is the moment to roll up our sleeves,” she urged.
Concern was shared by Global Health Advocates’ Executive Director, Patrick Bertand. “Countries are moving back from funding at precisely the time they need to scale up. We know what the solutions are. We need to act,” he said.
Brieuc Pont, France’s Special Envoy on Nutrition and Secretary General of the N4G Summit added an upbeat tone to the proceedings and emphasised how development starts with nutrition and is essential to peace.
In France, as in the UK, public pressure to tackle global hunger has fallen in part precipitated by the cost-of-living crisis and stretched government budgets, as David Mundell, Steve Race, and Jonny Oates heard in meetings.
Éléonore Caroit explained that switching the narrative to focus on childhood nutrition – especially in the first 1,000 days of life – malnutrition in the elderly, and obese adolescents was helping to drive the message home in France.
The next stop was the British Embassy, where Laura McCambridge the Embassy’s Minister Counsellor for Economic, Political, and Social Affairs explained that in a city that hosts many summits, N4G was high on the agenda.
The group’s final meeting was a detailed discussion with Brieuc Pont, who expressed his confidence the Summit would be a success and hope that the birthplace of N4G – the UK – would produce a financial commitment.
Monsieur Pont was headed for Cape Town to address an assembly of banks and press for action to fight malnutrition, because “there is nothing more powerful than financial and political diplomacy working together.”
Work will continue beyond N4G, with more international moments coming up such as the SUN Global Gathering meeting in November in Kigali.
Nutrition for Growth Summits are broadly organised every four years, usually by the host country of the Olympic and Paralympic games. Tokyo hosted the last N4G in 2021. France intends to pass the flame to the USA which stages the Games in 2028.
The great hope is that governments’ support for international development will improve, and foundational nutrition services will be protected and prioritised.
That way, we must believe the race to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2, Zero Hunger, can still be met by the 2030 finish line.
