SCN News No 36 - UNSCN

www.unsystem.org/scn SECRETARY’S ROUND-UP 3
for oil prices to fall now is remote as global production capacity seems to have peaked. The price of food is
strongly correlated with the price of oil, so there seems little likelihood of food becoming cheap again either. The
unprecedented economic growth that has marked the last sixty years of global peace, has also meant that the
demand for animal foods has grown enormously. Although the global grain production is double that needed to
feed the global population, over a half of this grain is fed to animals. In addition the global population has almost
doubled since 1970, and just over a half now live in urban areas. But in addition there are other important new
drivers of the food price crisis now that didn’t exist thirty years ago and that make the situation now much more
complicated. These include a globalized financial sector which allows speculation in the food commodity markets
plus the provision of financial incentives to produce biofuels from corn as a response to the climate change crisis.
How the Comprehensive Framework for Action will deal with all of these complex challenges still remain to be seen,
but the results of the latest DOHA round at the World Trade Organization in Geneva this week are more likely to be
the ones that will have the greatest impact on the likelihood of solving the crisis in the medium and long term.
Hopefully the trade of agricultural products will be given a level playing field, as agreed by member states at the
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), at its twelfth session in Accra (UNCTAD 2008).
Another event which has placed nutrition on the international agenda this year is the Copenhagen Consensus
which updated its ranked list of solutions to major world challenges from 2004. As Bjørn Lomborg, the founder and
leader of this initiative said: “It’s not very often you get 5 Nobel Laureates being locked up in the same room for
4 days talking about the biggest world issues, and I hope that the dedication they’ve put into compiling this unique
overview of the best spending options to improve the world will resonate with decision-makers all over the world.”
From this economist point of view, interventions to address hunger and malnutrition rank at the top of the
suggested solutions in terms of cost-benefit analysis, which will surely help bring further leverage to the advocacy
claims of the nutrition community. The initiative is briefly described in this issue along with a Speaker's Corner
commentary where the long-time SCN participant George Kent shares his own views (p.73).
This year also sees the 60 th Anniversary of signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN 1948), and
as is explained in the Programme News section (p.65), there have been many important new achievements in this
field in the first half of the year. In May the Human Rights Council held a special session on the negative impact of
the food price crisis on the realization of the right to food. The session was called by the newly appointed UN
Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Mr Olivier De Schutter. The Human Rights Council also approved by
consensus an Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which
brings one step closer the possibility of international remedy mechanisms for violation of this covenant.
It is also encouraging that nutrition is being given a new priority by WHO (Chan 2008), which also celebrates its
60 th Anniversary this year. It is great that Francesco Branca has been appointed to the Division of Nutrition in Health
and Development of WHO. We welcome Francesco, who comes from being the regional adviser for the European
Region of WHO, and wish him all success in his new role. Thanks are due to Jørgen Schlundt, who has served as the
Acting Director of NHD for the last year, and who now returns to just looking after food safety in WHO. There are also
new Chairs in the Civil Society constituency, with Ted Greiner taking over as Chair, with Ricardo Uauy, Urban Jonsson
and Elisabet Sterken as Vice Chairs. In the bilateral constituency, Biram Ndiaye, previously Coordinator of the National
Committee Against Malnutrition of Senegal, acted as Vice Chair for a short period before he joined UNICEF.
In the meantime the call for a review of the international nutrition architecture made by the LNS has been heeded,
and two reviews are in hand. The larger review of the international nutrition architecture is being supported by the Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), and the smaller review of UN coordination mechanisms has been carried
out by the SCN Steering Committee. We look forward to seeing the results of these two processes being published.
References
Berg A (1973) The Nutrition Factor in Development. Brookings Institution Press.
Chan M (2008) The global nutrition challenge: getting a healthy start. Keynote address by Dr Margaret Chan, Director-General
of the World Health Organization at the Pacific Health Summit, Seattle, Washington, USA, 18.06.2008 (online).
Maternal and Child Undernutrition Study Group (2008) Maternal and child undernutrition. The Lancet 371(9608-12). Available
at www.thelancet.com/collections/series/undernutrition
SCN (2008a) Report of the Standing Committee on Nutrition at its Thirty-Fifth Session. Hosted by the Vietnamese
Government, Hanoi, Viet Nam, 3-6 March 2008. (online)
SCN (2008b) SCN's Awards of Merit 2008. (online)
UN (1948) Universal Declaration of Human Rights. General Assembly res. 217 A (III) of 10 December 1948. (online)
UNCTAD (2008) The Accra Declaration. Twelfth session. 20–25 April 2008. (online)
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