The Scaling Up Nutrition Movement: Progress

The Framework for Scaling-Up Nutrition (SUN) is a response to the continuing high levels of under-nutrition in our world and the uneven progress towards the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) - set in 2000 - to halve poverty and hunger by the year 2015. Success with this MDG is critical for equitable economic and social development, and to the realization of all the MDGs. The SUN framework has been developed by specialists from governments, academia, research institutions, civil society, private companies, development agencies, UN organizations and the World Bank. It has been endorsed by more than 100 organizations and was unveiled in Washington in April 2010 at a meeting co-hosted by Canada, Japan, USAID and the World Bank. A short introduction to the Framework is available .

The next step was to develop concrete recommendations for the wider group of SUN stakeholders at local, national and regional levels on how to scale up nutritional outcomes relevant to the realization of the MDGs: the Road Map for Scaling-Up Nutrition (edición española, version française). This SUN Road Map has been developed by a Task Team over a period of 60 days leading up to the September 2010 Summit on the Millennium Development Goals. The SUN Road Map Task Team drew on the insights of five Working Groups made up of people from governments, civil society, the private sector, philanthropic foundations and the research community.

The SUN Road Map answers the question "how to bring the SUN Framework to life and ensure that it leads to real - and sustained - improvements in nutrition in the highest burden countries?" It indicates ways in which developing countries, development partners, businesses and civil society can become more deeply involved in making the SUN Framework operational. It indicates the political, technical and financial means through which development agencies can support the development and implementation of action plans for Scaling up Nutrition. It sets out pathways, processes and milestones for this collective work.

Stakeholders in the Movement are increasing the resources made available to SUN countries and better aligning their financial and technical support to national nutrition priorities. They are helping countries implement their specific nutrition interventions and their nutrition-sensitive development strategies that have been shown to be effective.

The speed with which the Movement has evolved is an indicator of the increasing political commitment to nutrition. At the start of March 2011, three countries had signaled their intend to scale up nutrition, reduce their levels of undernutrition and become SUN countries. Today, the number has risen to 34 - between them they are home to over 50 million children under 5 affected by chronic undernutrition (stunting). This represents more than one quarter of all stunted children in the world today.

The UN Secretary General has appointed a high-level, multi-stakeholder Lead Group to provide overall strategic leadership of the SUN Movement.

The UNSCN Secretariat, in collaboration with the SUN Secretariat and partners, has organized a Round Table Event on 30 April, 2012 in Rio de Janeiro during the World Nutrition Conference. The theme of the Round Table was:

The SUN Movement: Achievements and the way forward

The Round Table discussion was chaired by Denise Costa Coitinho, former UNSCN Executive Secretary. Panellists include representatives from SUN countries (Mozambique, Zambia, Peru, Indonesia), civil society, REACH and GAIN.

Opening remarks from the SUN Movement Coordinator, David Nabarro, were given through a video address. It can be watched here.

The summary report of the Round Table discussions can be downloaded by clicking here.

Other SUN News:

Two SUN Government Focal Point Meetings have taken place in September 2012 in New York, at the sidelines of the UN General Assembly:

26September: discussion on progress indicators and nutrition outcomes with an agreement on a consistent system for tracking progress
28 September: roundtable discussions on the way forward sharing experiences and challenges and defining further support needed from the SUN Networks. At the onset of this meeting, the UNSCN Executive Secretariat, Dr. Branca, introduced the concept of nutrition-sensitive development, providing examples.

The SUN High-Level Event was held on 27 September. The event marked the release of the 2012 SUN Progress Report and highlighted the growing global commitment to scaling up nutrition. The report can be downloaded here.

The webcast of the meeting can be found here.

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The Scaling Up Nutrition Movement: Progress

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