Feature: Tokyo Nutrition for Growth Summit 2021

The Government of Japan hosted the Tokyo Nutrition for Growth Summit on December 7th (Tue) and 8th (Wed), 2021.

At the Summit, governments, international organizations, the private sector, civic groups and other various stakeholders presented their commitments to reducing malnutrition, while aiming to boost cooperation among the organizations.

JICA will continue the cooperation in order to improve nutrition through capacity building to combat malnutrition by multi-sectoral approaches implemented by the governments of developing countries, closely coordinating with stakeholders to hold a successful summit and achieve global targets.

Prior to the summit, JICA states the basic ideas of JICA's nutrition policy as Nutrition Declaration, "Nutrition for All: Ten-Point Commitment to Realize Human Security".

Based on this declaration, JICA promotes its efforts and strengthen partnerships among various stakeholders, in order to realize our shared goal of "Nutrition for All."

The Tokyo Nutrition for Growth Summit 2021 was held in conjunction with the Olympic and Paralympic Games to promote international efforts to resolve malnutrition issues. The Governments of Canada and Bangladesh co-hosted a launch event in December 2020, and in 2021 "Nutrition for Growth Year of Action," various events on improving nutrition were held throughout the year.

At the Tokyo Nutrition for Growth Summit 2021, the climax of the events, leaders of governments, international organizations, the private sector, civil society organizations (CSO) and other groups widely discussed the themes of food, health and prosperity to improve nutrition of people around the world, and shared common awareness for the direction of future actions.

To set practical targets for nutrition improvement in the world, the Summit also focused on their commitments presented by various stakeholders. A global monitoring framework will be developed to track achievement status of the presented commitments to address global nutrition challenges.

The Tokyo Nutrition for Growth Summit 2021 discussed the following five main themes:

The first Nutrition for Growth Summit was held at the initiative of the then Prime Minister Cameron in London in UK in 2013, as the legacy of the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics. Leaders including the UK Prime Minister, the President of Brazil, the Prime Minister of Ireland (Presidency of the Council of the EU), and the President of Malawi participated in the Summit, and an outcome document "Global Nutrition for Growth Compact" ^[1] was endorsed.

The second Nutrition for Growth Summit was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in conjunction with the 2016 Olympics and Paralympics. The Summit was participated by the Brazil's Health Minister, DFID Special Ambassador for Nutrition, WHO Director-General, FAO Director-General and other leaders. An outcome document "Joint Communique of the governments of Brazil, Japan and United Kingdom" ^[2] was prepared, which included initiatives for 2020 by the Governments of Brazil, UK and Japan.

Notes

[1] Global Nutrition for Growth Compact (PDF) (external link)

[2] Joint Communique of the governments of Brazil, Japan and United Kingdom (PDF) (external link)

JICA contributes to the commitment making of Japan in the Nutrition for Growth Summit for improving nutrition in developing countries through activities in the food and agriculture sectors based on the approach of "Initiative for Food and Nutrition Security in Africa" (IFNA) ^[3] , activities in the health sector to achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC)and various activities through multi-stakeholder-approaches ^[4] leveraging Japan's experience in development as well as JICA's strengths.

Notes

[3] Initiative for Food and Nutrition in Africa (IFNA) (external link)

[4] JICA Activities (Nutrition)

[Coming soon]

JICA produced JICA-Net multimedia-based learning material, "Maternal and Child Nutrition and SHOKUIKU in Japan - for health and well-being of children -" (external link: YouTube) , which organizes the direction discussed in the summit and after that, and Japan's experiences with a storyline to show easily JICA's future direction for cooperation in the field of maternal and child nutrition (MCHN) for Japan and the world.

On April 8, 2021, the Global Nutrition Report (GNR) and Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) co-hosted the 3rd Roundtable for "Nutrition for Growth Year of Action."

On February 25, 2021, GNR and SUN co-hosted a roundtable featuring East and Southern Africa for the Tokyo Nutrition for Growth Summit.

On February 17, 2021, GNR and SUN co-hosted a roundtable featuring Asia-Pacific regions for the Tokyo Nutrition for Growth Summit.

On December 14, 2020, Governments of Canada, Bangladesh, and Japan, and with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation held a launch event for Nutrition for Growth Year of Action leading up to the Tokyo Nutrition for Growth Summit.

The official website for Tokyo Nutrition for Growth Summit 2021 shows an article of the Ajinomoto Foundation's "Ghana Nutrition Improvement Project" (English).