Urge UK leaders to fund nutrition fairly – write to them today

Dear Foreign Secretary Lammy and Minister Dodds, 

733 million people and counting are hungry and malnourished. 2.8 billion can’t afford a healthy diet. At least one billion women and adolescent girls suffer from under nutrition, micronutrient deficiencies and anaemia.  

A malnutrition crisis of this scale has no place in the 21st century. Not only does the UK have a moral imperative to help tackle it, but ensuring good nutrition is also key to achieving broader health, education, economic and gender outcomes, and therefore empowering communities across the globe.  

That’s why I’m asking you to make a strong commitment to the upcoming Nutrition for Growth summit by: 

• Committing to invest at least £500 million in nutrition-specific programmes between 2025-2030 

• Maximising impact of spending in other key areas, including health, agriculture and climate by ensuring at least £2.5 billion of ODA is nutrition-sensitive between 2025-2030

• Setting an ambition to reach at least 50 million children, women and adolescent girls with nutrition related interventions by 2030 and report yearly on how many people are reached with nutrition-specific interventions 

• Integrating nutrition across development sectors, to make meaningful progress in tackling the underlying causes of malnutrition. This includes setting ambitious targets for integrating nutrition across climate, agriculture, health, WASH and social protection; and to increase nutrition-sensitive spending in these sectors in line with previous best practice 

• Putting gender equality at the heart of nutrition programmes by ensuring that at least 90% of nutrition spending is gender-sensitive 

• Building on the UK’s nutrition policy expertise by partnering with governments and research institutions to fund research in key areas such as preventing malnutrition, child wasting, adolescent nutrition and immunisation-nutrition integration 

• Leading global accountability efforts by funding the Global Nutrition Report to enhance the Nutrition Accountability Framework, a critical tool to ensure governments follow through on their N4G commitments 

• Strengthening partnerships with local civil society organisations so they can advocate for nutrition to their governments. Embed an advocacy component within FCDO nutrition programmes and commit to fund the Scaling Up Nutrition Civil Society Network. 

For more information about how the UK can have a meaningful impact at N4G Paris, contact Jack Feinmann ([email protected]), Parliamentary Relations Manager at Action Against Hunger. 

Sincerely,

[Your name]