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The United Nations Standing Committee on Nutrition (UNSCN) is a forum where UN agencies, Bilateral Partners and NGOs/CSOs come together to exchange information and discuss nutrition related issues. The UNSCN is not another agency but a mechanism for facilitating joint work. It aims to ensure that the system-wide response is indeed greater than the sum of the individual efforts.

The UNSCN is an extended network of food and nutrition professionals that meet once a year at the UNSCN Annual Sessions. The UNSCN network is open to all and includes most of the major players in the international food and nutrition arena. UNSCN membership is primarily determined by institutional affiliation among its three constituencies: the UN Agencies, the Bilateral Partners and the Non-Governmental and Civil Society Organizations (NGO/CSO). Through thematic Working Groups or in the cross-cutting Task Forces, participants take an active role in the work of the UNSCN.

The UNSCN is governed by a Chair, currently Ramiro Lopes da Silva (Deputy Executive Director of WFP) who is the eleventh Chair of the UNSCN and heads the UNSCN Steering Committee. Created some thirty years ago, it has had various organizational changes and has since 2000 been run by a Steering Committee with representation from each of the constituencies, under the guidance of the Chair.

In 1977, following the World Food Conference (with particular reference to Resolution V on food and nutrition) the Administrative Committee on Coordination (ACC), comprised of the heads of the UN Agencies, recommended the establishment of the Sub-Committee on Nutrition. This was approved by the Economic and Social Council of the UN (ECOSOC). After the reform of the ACC in 2001, the ACC/SCN was renamed the United Nations System Standing Committee on Nutrition or simply the UNSCN. The UNSCN reports to the Chief Executives Board of the UN, the successor of the ACC.

At the hub of the UNSCN network is the UNSCN Secretariat, which is hosted by WHO in Geneva and core funded by the UN agencies. The Bilateral Partners have traditional funded the publications of the UNSCN, and the NGO/CSO group contributed freely of its time to help run the Working Groups.

The UNSCN is not in itself an implementing agency. It is a forum in which the relevant UN agencies come together to harmonize their nutrition policies and programmes, coordinate activities and promote joint action, in partnership and common cause with representatives of national governments (the Bilateral Partners) and of non-government organizations (the NGOs/CSOs).

The UNSCN acknowledges the private sector as important actors engaged in nutrition related activities, and has developed guidelines for interacting with the private sector, especially those industries with commercial interest in the nutrition.

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