Third Progress Report on the Commission's Action Plan on Nutrition

This third progress report presents highlights of operational developments in the European Union’s (EU) external assistance concerned with nutrition and provides updates on progress towards its two commitments in nutrition:

• to support partner countries in reducing the number of stunted children under the age of five by at least 7 million by 2025
• and to ensure the allocation of EUR 3.5 billion between 2014 and 2020 to improve nutrition in developing countries.

This report was issued as a Staff Working Document on 9 October 2018 [SWD(2018)441 final]. It presents examples of the Commission’s nutrition work characterised by a strong gender dimension, aimed at individuals at different stages of the life cycle and applied across sectors. It is anticipated that such cross-cutting approaches will also secure progress in addressing boundaries between different forms of malnutrition.

The Union is on-course to meet its commitment to invest EUR 3.5 billion in nutrition by 2020. In the period 2014 – 2017, total funds committed to nutrition-related actions amounted to nearly EUR 2.5 billion.

Through its assistance programmes, the EU is also contributing to the reduction of stunting. In the 40 partner countries prioritising nutrition, the prevalence of stunting has decreased from 39.57% in 2012 to 35.82% in 2017. The number of children averted from stunting has increased from an estimated 1 million in 2016 to a projected 4.7 million in 2018.

The pace of stunting reduction has also accelerated from 1.16% in 2012 to 1.41% in 2017, highlighting improvements that were not foreseen when the global nutrition targets were set. Such results have been achieved through the joint efforts of the various actors working in nutrition, both at the national and international levels.

In order to better understand the likely drivers behind the progress in fighting stunting, and as a first step towards assessing the EU’s potential contribution to these results, a dashboard has been developed with indicators relevant to nutrition for all partner countries prioritising nutrition (see annex II). These indicate that:

• 36 of the 42 countries (86%) show improvement in their stunting prevalence since 2012.
• All Asian countries and 79% of African countries have seen improvement in stunting prevalence since 2012.
• Across the 42 countries, two of the five context indicators are performing worse than the others, which could have bearing on stunting reduction: limited programme coverage and low ranking in the Hunger and Nutrition Commitment Index (HANCI).

At the Nutrition Seminar held in Brussels in March 2018, European Commissioner Neven Mimica emphasised the need to “explore how we can recalibrate our efforts to ensure that we address all forms of malnutrition and that we continue to contribute to the goal of zero hunger beyond 2020”.

In that regard, the report indicates that the integration of measures to address multiple forms of malnutrition – such as wasting, anaemia in women and adolescent girls and overweight/obesity – in EU support programmes can contribute to achieve the global stunting reduction target by 2025.