Nutrition 4 Growth – beating hunger and inequality through business and science*

Another week and another important day to be marked! Today we celebrate the Blog Action Day.

Since 2007, every year there is a different theme that bloggers around the world post about. Previous themes included Human Rights, Climate Change and Environment. This year’s theme is inequality and today blogs across over 110 countries will write on this topic to raise awareness and reflection around it in different perspectives.

What does it mean to you? How do you look at it in your country and abroad? When you reflect about it, do you think about numbers and stats such as Brazil ranking 79^th place in UNDP’s (United Nation Development Programme) Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index while the UK ranks 14^th? Also, do you consider that recent studies show that the richest 1% of people owns nearly half of all global wealth, or do you think about inequality in a more humane way? This video shows a clear and easy picture to understand global inequality. However, I invite you to think of it through the lenses of human dignity. How to give back dignity for those who suffer from extreme inequality?

We know that Brazil and several other countries face serious domestically challenges regarding inequality. Nonetheless, is important to acknowledge that many countries – developed and developing ones – have shown great effort in fighting inequality. One way this is done is giving back dignity through the right to food. Recently, UN’s FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) has published a new report in which Brazil is no longer on their Hunger Map.

Following that line and since this is a blog about foreign policy, my colleague from DFID (Department for International Development) and I thought it would be a good idea to talk about one of the ways the UK is helping to fight inequality through the right to food.

Therefore, DFID runs a programme called Nutrition for Growth. It is a political commitment between UK and Brazil that aims to transform millions of lives worldwide by putting together global efforts to tackle under nutrition. The programme, launched by the Prime Minister, is co-hosted by Brazil and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF). As a result, this highlights the strong UK-Brazil relationship on agriculture, food and nutrition – a key part of the global partnership on development.

It is important to notice that the Programme was the biggest strategic social media event the Department for International Development (DFID) has ever managed, reaching five million twitter accounts and gaining huge media coverage.

A Nutrition for Growth compact was endorsed by 94 stakeholders (made up of partners, businesses, scientific and civil society groups) which commits to extend effective nutrition to at least 500 million people (pregnant mothers and children under two), and to prevent at least 20 million children under five from becoming stunted by 2020.

Financial commitments by donors, philanthropy and civil society included new commitments of up to £2.7 billion to tackle under-nutrition up to 2020.   The UK promised a total of £655m for nutrition specific programme spend.

We believe that access to a proper nutrition helps empowering individuals, giving back their dignity, transforming lives and fighting inequality. There is great potential for more people and countries to engage in cooperation initiatives such as N4G, thus together we can help diminish inequality across the globe!

*Written in partnership with Mariana Almeida from DFID.