Commitment

Increase the proportion of people reached by WFP who benefit from programs designed to improve access to and consumption of healthy diets

Multilateral organisation / Italy

January 2022 — December 2025

Description

Over the next five years, WFP aims to effectively integrate nutrition at scale. Achieving this will rely on investing in programmes, operations and platforms that tackle both underlying and immediate drivers of poor diets and malnutrition. This will require that food assistance programmes ensure nutritional adequacy across the life cycle and through multiple systems. There will therefore be a focus on engaging and strengthening health, education, social protection and food systems as well as on capacitating national governments and stakeholders. Systematic measurement of contributions to improving meal quality, healthy diets and food choices will ensure effective and efficient programming.

As part of this strategy, WFP plans to expand access to nutrition services, with a focus on fragile or humanitarian settings. WFP and its partners will prioritize

prevention and treatment interventions that seek to reduce wasting, stunting and

micronutrient deficiencies for pregnant and lactating women, infants and young children. These include the use and scale-up of fortified and nutrient-dense foods for women, adolescent girls, young children and those with disabilities to address vitamin and mineral deficiencies.

Beyond emergencies, WFP will work with communities, households and individuals to

enhance their capacity to protect and improve their diets and nutrition status in the face of shocks and long-term stressors, while addressing inequality (e.g., social, gender, disability) that affects access to a healthy diet. When required, WFP will support double duty actions that have the potential to simultaneously reduce the risk and burden of both undernutrition and overweight, obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases.

Moreover, WFP will increase advocacy and engagement to make nutrition a national priority that is integrated into national programmes. This will lay the foundations for long-term solutions to malnutrition and accelerate the achievement of key global nutrition objectives sustainably and at scale.

As a cross-cutting approach, nutrition integration will need to be an integral part of various phases of the programme cycle. This will make it necessary to factor in technology, financing and other resources dedicated to improving nutrition from the outset. Nutrition will also be more effectively integrated into supply chains, data and analytics, global policy, advocacy and partnerships.

Overarching commitment (for commitments submitted pre-2025)

Title

Improve nutrition and diets

Description

WFP commits to increasing the proportion of people reached through programs that aim to increase access to and consumption of healthy diets, from 40% of total beneficiaries reached in 2020 to 80% in 2025.

As part of this, WFP commits to increasing the number of pregnant and lactating women and girls (PLWG) and children under 5 covered by malnutrition prevention and treatment programs each year, from 17 million in 2020 to 25 million in 2025.

WFP also commits to supporting additional 35 national governments by 2025 - on top of the 36 countries as of 2021 - with the use of the Fill the Nutrient Gap and ENHANCE analytical tools, which help identify the barriers faced by the most vulnerable to accessing and consuming healthy diets. These analytics will be used to inform policy and programming, and build public-private partnerships in sectors that can contribute to improving diets and ultimately nutrition outcomes - such as social protection, health, agriculture, education and others.

GNR assessment

Verification status
Verified
Find out more
SMARTness index

Details

Target population characteristic
  • Age or life course stage/status
  • Chronic illness
  • Community geography
  • Economic status of country
  • Refugee status or status as an internally displaced person
  • Socioeconomic status
Global nutrition target(s)
Anaemia
Low birth weight
Exclusive breastfeeding
Childhood stunting
Childhood wasting
Childhood overweight
Adult obesity
Adult diabetes
Raised blood pressure
Nutrition Action Classification(s)
Policy > Nutrition care services
Find out more
Linked event(s)
  • 2021 Tokyo N4G Summit
N4G Summit theme(s)
  • Food
  • Health
  • Resilience
  • Data

Measurement

Key indicator Proportion of people reached by WFP who benefit from programs designed to improve access to and consumption of healthy diets out of total beneficiaries reached by WFP each year
Value Measurement date
Baseline 40% 2020
Target 80% December 2025

Progress

Status:
Off Course
Why this status?
The reported progress indicates that the expected level thus far had not yet been achieved and is not expected to be achieved by the end date, but as the end date is not yet reached, it could be still be possible to reach and maintain the target level.
Value Measurement date
Progress report 54% December 2023

Share this commitment