UNICEF presents new framework to tackle child malnutrition and poverty

26 Jan 2024 --- The new UNICEF report highlights the interconnectedness between nutrition and poverty among children, providing guidelines for social protection practitioners to support governments in intentionally developing synergies between these critical areas. The paper presents practical pathways for combined child nutrition and social protection programs.

Roughly 3.1 billion people worldwide cannot afford to eat a healthy diet and children are twice as likely as adults to live in extreme poverty. While 37 million children globally are overweight, 45 million under the age of five suffer from malnutrition-related wasting and 148 million have stunted growth and development. 

Aiming to facilitate the amelioration of these distressing numbers, the report identifies five critical priorities for practitioners — build and grow synergies between child nutrition and social protection policies and programs at multiple levels; introduce agile maternal and child nutrition and social protection programs; prepare risk-informed child nutrition and social protection programs in fragile and humanitarian contexts; improve implementation capacity and invest in gender-transformative programs. 

Program framework 
The paper introduces a program framework outlining strategies for the intentional integration of child nutrition and social protection programs, emphasizing social transfers as vital.

The social transfer methods explored in the framework are cash transfers, food donations and vouchers. Governments or partners can lead these at various levels, according to UNICEF. 

Cash and voucher transfers to address malnutrition among vulnerable populations can  stimulate the local food economies and support dietary diversity, with vouchers outlined as particularly helpful in contexts where carrying cash could pose a security threat. 

Food transfers are crucial where there is deficient availability of food or where food markets are not functioning, banking and cell phones are disturbed and populations are not able to move freely. Such targeted donations stimulate the local economies, especially where local food is still being produced and nutrition can be improved by selecting foods with fortified micronutrient status.

The organization’s research shows that longer intervals of time between transfers of higher value lead to successful investments in productive assets, while more regular and smaller value transfers are best for meeting daily nutritional needs, which are vital in maintaining predictability and regularity. 

The report recommends gender-responsive transfers, pointing to data that shows that social transfers made to female caregivers are more likely to reach children and other vulnerable household members. Meanwhile, in households facing food insecurity, girls are frequently the first to experience the withholding of nutritious meals. 

The paper presents practical pathways for combined child nutrition and social protection programs.The report asserts the need for social transfers to be designed in a way that supports women’s participation in the labor force, improves intra-household dynamics and protects women’s health during pregnancy, child care and breastfeeding. 

UNICEF does not promote conditionality in social transfers. The paper presents evidence of unconditional cash transfers yielding child nutrition improvement results while linking conditionality to the marginalization of vulnerable populations. 

School meals are highlighted as an essential type of social transfer that should be unconditional and delivered alongside a curriculum on food and nutrition, counseling and support on topics linked to nutrition and health, micronutrient supplementation and access to safe drinking water. 

Success stories
The report details several examples of projects that successfully addressed both child malnutrition and poverty. 

For example, it highlights the Kenyan government’s NICHE program, providing cash transfers and counseling on nutrition to families with children under two years old in counties with high levels of stunting. Since its implementation in 2016, the program has achieved improvement in child diets, infant feeding and hygiene practices. Meanwhile, the country’s national Hunger Safety Net Programme provides cash to households in counties vulnerable to drought. 

Between 2019 and 2020, Thailand conducted a study of risk factors for the double burden of child malnutrition in the country using UNICEF’s Multi-Indicator Cluster Surveys to examine factors associated with child stunting, wasting and overweight. Based on the findings, the Thai government considered implementing policy interventions to improve maternal and child nutrition and address socioeconomic disparities. 

Moreover, Rwanda rolled out its Modelling Nutrition-Sensitive Social Protection Interventions pilot project in 2019, delivering cash transfers, integrated case management and referral, support for agricultural livelihoods and kitchen gardens, nutrition services, access to a village savings and loans scheme and financial literacy training to vulnerable households. 

In Sri Lanka, UNICEF’s nutrition and social protection teams successfully campaigned together before the local government for the expansion of the national voucher program for pregnant and lactating women to reach children within the first 1,000 days of life. 

Meanwhile, UNICEF Mexico worked with the National Welfare Agency, Chedraui Foundation and Calimax supermarkets in delivering nutritious food baskets and food vouchers to 37,000 during the COVID-19 pandemic in an attempt to target the rising rates of overweight and obesity in the country. 

The document spotlights worldwide achievements over the past two decades, with the number of children under five suffering from stunted growth falling by one-third, the global poverty rate declining by 70% between 2000 and 2019, and the proportion of children living in extreme poverty falling from 21% to 16% between 2013 and 2022. 

By Milana Nikolova