FAQs

The Nutrition Accountability (NAF) Platform will be open for stakeholders to register their nutrition commitments at any time.

For the Tokyo N4G summit, commitments are encouraged to be registered by 31 October 2021 and the summit will be the hard deadline for registering commitments for the Nutrition Year of Action. If you submit your commitment by 31 October, the Global Nutrition Report will be able to perform a basic level of verification. For those registered after 31 October, no verification will be performed in time for the summit and so commitments registered after 31 October may not be featured in the summit. All commitments registered between 14 December 2020 (the launch of the N4G Year of Action) and 8 December 2021 (the closing of the N4G Year of Action) will be included in the Compact (Annex), the outcome document of the summit.

All commitments should be registered and submitted through the NAF Commitment Registration Form. You may choose to download the Commitment Registration Form to see the information required in advance, but this form is for your own use only; the registration of your commitment(s) is valid only if you complete and submit the online registration form.

Support and guidance to help commitment makers register SMART commitments includes:

• A video (with subtitles available in French and Spanish) to demonstrate how to sign up to the NAF Platform, how to sign in and how to register a commitment
• Downloadable versions of the Sign up and Commitment Registration forms to assist stakeholders in gathering the information they’ll need to complete the online forms (also available in French and Spanish)
• Examples of completed Commitment Registration Forms (also available in French and Spanish).

The GNR is not able to provide technical assistance to help commitment makers register SMART commitments.

The working/primary language of the GNR is English, as such, we request all stakeholders to register their commitment in English and the management of commitments – i.e., verification and progress reporting – will be done in English.

We recognise however that not all stakeholders use English as their primary working language and given GNR’s values of accessibility and inclusivity, the GNR has developed tools to support non-English speakers:

• A guide on how to register a commitment can be found here, with subtitles available in French and Spanish
• Sign up and Commitment Registration forms (including examples of completed Commitment Registration forms) and FAQs are available in French and Spanish on the NAF resources page.

The GNR collaborates with partners who may be able to help with translation. Please contact the GNR at [email protected] if you have difficulties using GNR resources or platform.

Through verification the GNR assess the coherence and completeness of each commitment. For example, checking if the indicators are in line with the goals and description of the overall commitment, or asking for missing information. This process is in place to ensure commitments SMART. Stakeholders will be contacted directly by the GNR team to clarify any missing or unclear information. Once commitment makers have provided the clarifications, the GNR team will then amend the commitment accordingly and inform the commitment maker that their commitment has been edited and is confirmed to be verified.

The verification process will be conducted in English. For more on support for speakers of other languages, please see the previous question.

All new commitments will be assessed by the GNR team through the verification process, at which point changes can be made. Once verified, a commitment cannot be changed. For more information, see commitment verification.

Commitments made on behalf of multiple organisations should be registered only once by the primary organisation. The primary organisation is responsible for registering the commitment and reporting on its progress annually to the Global Nutrition Report. There are relevant fields in the Commitment Registration Form, where you may specify the additional organisations.

This usually refers to different multiple organisations involved in a joint commitment. However, there may cases of different UN agencies, for example, involved in a joint commitment, where each UN agency should be listed as a different stakeholder.

Commitments that were previously registered but not achieved for various reasons can be registered again as new commitments. Moreover, it is encouraged that strengthened commitments are also registered.

Each organisation should complete the user Sign-up form once, unless there are different departments within the same organisation that lead separate commitments in which case each department should complete a separate user Sign-up form to register their own commitments. They can then register as many commitments as they wish. Each commitment should be registered separately (i.e., complete a Commitment Registration Form for each of your commitments). Once you complete the registration of your first commitment, you will have the option to register additional ones.

The Nutrition Accountability Framework (NAF) welcomes all new nutrition commitments, and through the commitment registration form, commitment makers will be able to indicate whether they are expected to report their commitment to an additional – other than the GNR – tracking/accountability mechanism. Similarly, commitment makers will be able to indicate whether their nutrition commitment is linked to a particular summit or event. Nutrition commitments reported elsewhere will not be automatically transferred to the NAF. We therefore encourage stakeholders to report their commitments through the NAF to facilitate the formulation of SMART commitments and ensure strong accountability for nutrition actions.

The N4G Tracker is born out of the first N4G Summit and includes commitments made in the 2013 and 2017 N4G Summits. The N4G Tracker will come to an end in 2022 and the NAF platform has been created to register and track all new commitments made during the Year of Action and beyond. The NAF Platform is the new and strengthened accountability mechanism which has been created for registering SMART nutrition commitments and monitoring nutrition action.

The Nutrition Accountability Framework (NAF) welcomes all new nutrition commitments, and through the commitment registration form, commitment makers will be able to indicate whether their nutrition commitment is linked to a particular summit or event. Commitments that are linked to the N4G Summit and Year of Action must align with the N4G Principles of Engagement. Stakeholders considering making a nutrition commitment outside of the N4G Summit or the Year of Action -do not have to comply with the N4G Principles of Engagement- and should still register their commitments through the NAF.

Click here to download examples of completed Commitment Registration Forms.

The full formulation of the commitment should include the responsible organisation (The [Country] Ministry of Health Department of Nutrition); any additional organisations (in collaboration with [Organisation]); the measurable commitment goal(s) (reduce population-level intake of added sugar from 16% energy to less than 6% energy in 8 years); the action plan (implementing mandatory category-specific added sugar reformulation targets for packaged foods and beverages); the indicator used to measure progress (proportion of energy from added sugar assessed using the National Nutrition Survey conducted every two years), along with the baseline level and unit (added sugar intake of 16% of energy) and the level to be achieved (added sugar intake of 10% of energy) within a certain commitment period (2022–2030). Please also feel free to include any additional details that are relevant to your commitment and that you would like to highlight (e.g., total estimated costs, funding mechanism). For examples of fully formulated commitments please see The SMARTness of nutrition commitments.

For example, if an organisation reports receiving funding from a certain donor and this donor makes their own commitment about investing a certain amount of money on nutrition, would that be considered as double-counting?

No, this would not be considered as double counting. You are encouraged to specify the funders that will support the funding of the total costs associated with your commitment. This will help the Global Nutrition Report identify dependencies between commitments.

For private sector food businesses, whose products refer to all consumers (not specific population groups), the appropriate answer is “Overall population”. If the products refer to consumers of a specific population group (e.g., children, pregnant women), please select “Specific population group(s)”.

The Nutrition Accountability Framework (NAF) was created in order to strengthen accountability for nutrition commitments, therefore the registration process is key and should remain the same for all stakeholders. We understand that not all relevant information may be available at the time you register your commitment. Please indicate the information, for which the relevant details will be developed at a later stage, as to be developed (TBD) and email us at [email protected] when these details are finalised. In particular, we suggest that:

• For total cost (Q10) if you don't know or have not estimated it yet, you should select the option "No, the amount has not been estimated – unknown"
• In fields that allow text, you can enter TBD/TBC, in fields that only allow numerical characters you can enter 00000
• The start and end date of the commitment is compulsory to be completed. For any other date/year field, please see point below.
• If needed, any note/clarification you consider relevant can be included at the end of the form under ‘Additional information and feedback’

Overall, once the registration is done and after the Tokyo N4G summit, the GNR team will review and be in touch with stakeholders to refine commitments.