|
Access the pdf of this editorial here
Access the pdf of the related May editorial here
The UN System Standing Committee on Nutrition (SCN)
is of great interest and concern to Association
members, many of whom have been involved with the
SCN, some for many years. So here is good news.
Association Council member
Denise Costa Coitinho is the new SCN executive
secretary. This follows the promising appointment of
Alexander Müller as SCN chair in December 2008. More
good news is that the SCN Secretariat is doing a
great job, as anybody who accesses the
SCN
website knows. So now is a good time to take a
look at the SCN, and to look forward to what it
should and hopefully can recover, become and
achieve.
We support the UN and the SCN
The Association website carried comments on the SCN
in an editorial last month, and this month
World Nutrition
carries a response from
Alexander Müller, in which he invites us to
remain friendly appraisers of the SCN. We gladly
accept, and we invite responses to this editorial
from readers, including Association members.
As a declaration of faith and as an evidence-based
judgment, we can safely say that the Association and
WN believe in and support the United Nations
system. For all its shortcomings, without it we
might now mostly be dead or unborn. The main problem
with the UN and its agencies is enfeeblement. They
have been starved of unrestricted funds, subjected
to unwarranted and even outrageous pressure and
meddling, and in this century have been undermined
by the most powerful member states. The accusing
finger does not point at the UN system. The United
Nations can only be as good, in any sense, as the
great powers are prepared to let it be.
The signals from the US State Department during this
Obama administration now indicate renewed respect
for the UN and also for other member states,
including those who remain dependent on foreign
support. In this issue of WN we carry an
edited version of a speech by Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton which indicates an easing of the use
of the US Agency for International Development (USAID)
as a tool of ‘soft’ imperialism. It is still early
days, and the government of the USA at all levels is
now suffering a reactionary backlash. The time of
rejoicing will come only when impoverished countries
that have been and are still being robbed of their
treasure, are released from their external debt
burdens. But so far, so fairly good.
Members of the Association are also likely to be
united in support of a representative and
accountable SCN. Set up in 1977 as a deliberative
and the harmonising body for UN food and nutrition
policy, the SCN can also only be as good as the UN
agencies who fund and control it are prepared to let
it be. Now we must be circumspect. Some Association
members, including members of the WN editorial team
and our advisors, have inside knowledge of and
strong views on the SCN. So the remarks here about
its governance will be confined to what is already
publicly known.
The ‘big 4+1’ who call the shots
People who encounter the SCN often say that if it
did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it. A
total of over 20 UN agencies with a few other
bodies, are SCN members In practice, and with time
passing, its shots have been mostly called by ‘the
big four+one’. These are the World Health
Organization (WHO), the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations (FAO) of which
Alexander Müller is an assistant director-general,
the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the
World Food Programme (WPF) – these four, together
with the ‘one’, the World Bank, which to many
peoples’ surprise or amazement, is classified as a
UN body. Other agencies such as the UN Development
Programme (UNDP), the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP),
UN-Habitat (concerned with cities), and the
International Labour Office (ILO) have no real
standing within the SCN. They should have,
irrespective of inability to stump up substantial
funding.
The UN family is perhaps as quarrelsome as any
family. Some of the reasons for its differences of
view are different and sometimes conflicting
philosophies and programmes. WHO, whose work
corresponds to that of national government health
ministries, is mostly concerned with the prevention
and treatment of disease, within a broadly medical
framework. FAO, whose remit is much the same as that
of national ministries of food, agriculture,
fisheries and to some extent development, focuses
more on food production and supplies. UNICEF and WPF
have similar missions, which include special
attention to crises and emergencies, particularly
among vulnerable populations. UNICEF also has a
tradition of championing breastfeeding, and with WFP
works closely with donor countries, also known as ‘bilaterals’,
of which the richest is the US Agency for
International Development (USAID).
So on some basic issues, the ‘big four’ agencies are
bound not to agree. One clear example is becoming
evident in the pages of WN this month. UNICEF, and
to a less dogmatic extent WHO, are committed to
programmes designed to prevent and alleviate
undernutrition that are quasi-medical, using
supplements in effect as ‘magic bullet’ drugs. FAO
is committed to agriculture- and food-based
programmes that are meant to be sustainable. These
positions are bound to clash. This is one compelling
reason for the SCN. But much depends on how
reasonable and accommodating its heavy-hitters, and
also their bosses the heads of their agencies, are
prepared to be.
A dark decade
The ‘four+one’ agencies have a dominant majority on
the SCN governing body, its ‘steering committee’.
Here there has been and is more trouble. Of the
five, three (UNICEF, WPF, the World Bank) have chief
executives whose appointment is controlled by the US
government. This fact of itself does not vitiate the
proper purpose of the SCN. But it is evidence-based
to judge that during the dark eight years of the
administration of the younger George Bush,
contemptuous of and sometimes virulently hostile to
the UN system, abuse of US power did mess up the SCN,
as well as the UN itself.
Much of what goes on the world depends on the mood
of the US government. The younger Bush
administration appointed two Republican politicians
to head UNICEF and WPF (one is still in post), and
another, Paul Wolfowitz, a US imperialist
notoriously contemptuous of the UN, as head of the
World Bank. Successive appointments to the post of
US ambassador to the UN were at least as outrageous.
Worse yet for us concerned with international public
health food and nutrition policy and practice, the
US administration, directly or through surrogates,
chose as two successive chairs of the SCN two US
citizens, Republican politicians loyal to and
dependent on the Bush regime, who both became
notorious for their - well let's just say
shortcomings - when in post. Deliberately or not, and
notwithstanding the impressive stamina and patience
of Association founder member Roger Shrimpton,
Denise Coitinho’s predecessor as SCN executive
secretary, the SCN was damaged, some thought beyond
recovery, during this period.
A changing profile
In its first decades, the SCN was more or less a UN
closed shop. Its inner circles included academics,
some from the UN University (UNU) and also others
well known to and trusted by the agencies as regular
insider expert advisors. Some of its products were
highly influential: one example being the ‘Beaton
report’ on vitamin A supplementation (1) cited by
Michael Latham in last month’s WN commentary.
Starting around the turn of this century, the nature
and mood of the SCN changed, for two separate and
opposing reasons. It had always included some
‘bilaterals’ – usually representatives of aid and
development agencies of donor countries. Starting
with the annual week-long meeting held in 2000 in
Washington DC, civil society organisations emerged
as numerically large. The ‘CSNGO’ constituency had –
and has – practically no formal say in the SCN, but
gained a considerable amount of informal influence.
A lot of its members were – and are – people who are
well networked within the UN system, and some of
these know how to make policies that can work at
least as well as anybody else in the SCN. The CSNGOs
are a loose grouping of academics, non-profit while
commercially-friendly aid organisations, and
‘activist’ groups, notably those concerned with
breastfeeding and also with human rights. Its chair
and the bilaterals’ chair are members of the SCN
steering group.
Problems of privatisation
The opposing driving force in the 2000s has been
part of the general move to privatise public health.
The UN agencies have little disposable money and,
whether they like this or not (some don’t, some do)
have promoted ‘public-private partnerships’. These
are supposed to involve all ‘stakeholders’, but are
really set up to attract and engage the food, drink
and associated industries. As part of this new deal,
which has also involved big new outside players,
notably the Gates Foundation, in the 2000s
successive chairs of the SCN pressed to have ‘the
private sector’ admitted as a fourth constituency.
This proposal has been consistently resisted by the
bilateral and the CSNGO group, and by some of the UN
agencies and, as Alexander Müller states in our
letters pages this month, has not – or not yet –
been agreed.
Most reasonable people probably agree that industry
must be involved with the SCN. This is certainly the
view of the WN editorial team. The problem is that
what ‘industry’ in practice means, is Big Food and
Drink. These are the very powerful transnational
food and drink manufacturing and allied industries,
whose commercial interests conflict with those of
public health, who are united in their determination
to thwart any curb on their freedom to make money
any legal way they want.
It is one thing to invite the transport, energy,
insurance and even banking industries to be part of
the governance of the SCN. It is one thing to invite
a range of food producers, distributors and
retailers, or even the whole range of the food and
drink industry, as long as the appropriate people
are chosen by the SCN itself. It is quite another
thing when as it turns out, ‘the private sector’
means Big Food and Drink, and also Big Snack, Big
Fat, Big Sugar and Big Salt – companies such as
Nestlé, Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Co, Kraft, Unilever,
Kellogg, McDonald’s and Yum! Brands, also united in
their determination to penetrate their brands deeper
into lower-income countries. And it is another thing
when such companies are free to send who they like
to meetings, and the people who turn up are not main
Board directors with direct decision power, but
corporate affairs and public relations people
charged to spin and limit damage – which is the
general experience of ‘public-private partnerships’
so far.
Here is the nettle that Alexander Müller must grasp.
We wish him well.
Two scenarios
The SCN is now in the process either of being
reformed, or re-formed. Radical reformation, which
we understand is favoured by certainly three of the
‘four+one’, would revert the SCN to being a
practically exclusive UN group, free to draw on
outside experts and to gain outside funds, from
foundations and perhaps also from industry, as it
chose. This involves kicking out the bilateral and
civil society as constituencies with their own
identities, and abolishing the working groups
involving all constituencies that deliberate on
issues such as human rights, breastfeeding, and the
nutrition-infection nexus. The only non-government
organisations to be individually admitted would be
those that ‘paid their way’ with subscriptions, as
well as paying for their expenses, skills, and time.
This scenario is also favoured by a number of
academics who anticipate being in the inner circle.
These include some, jocularly known as ‘the Boston
Stranglers’, who are associated with the ‘business
interest NGO’ (BINGO), the
International Life Sciences Institute. This
journal will remain hostile to this scenario.
Careful re-formation of the SCN, of what organically
grew in the 2000s, would make for a closer and more
collegiate relationship between the three UN,
bilateral and civil society constituencies, always
accepting that the SCN is a UN body. This can
include industry as a new group, but with meticulous
exclusion of conflicted industry, who may however be
informally consulted. Re-formation is favoured by
the bilaterals and the civil society group, and also
– we must be circumspect here – by some UN members
of the steering committee, including some with
substantial influence. No names! This journal will
remain a champion of this scenario, and pledges to
be committed to its refinement and development.
Reasons to be cheerful
We also sense the beginnings of a sea-change in our
world and the world, away from greed, towards
solidarity. Honest people are gaining heart. With
the SCN, one reason to be cheerful is that Alexander
Müller’s day job is with a UN agency committed to
the food-based approach to nutrition and health, and
in his previous work as a Green politician in
Germany, he does not need to be taught about the
social, economic, political and environmental
dimensions of food systems and food policy. Also, he
is proving to be resilient, patient, positive, and,
let it be said, rather brave.
The appointment of Denise Coitinho as the new
executive secretary of the SCN, given that she is
entrusted within reasonable constraints to get on
with the job, is another good sign, for the SCN, for
the UN, and for world public health food and
nutrition policy and practice, as well as for the
Association.
Denise is not the first woman to have this central
position within the SCN, but remarkably, following a
Brit, a Canadian, and a Brit, as a Brazilian she is
the first from the South. She is well qualified. She
recently served as a WHO head of department in
Geneva, as head of its nutrition department. As such
she was for a while vice-chairman of the SCN. She
then worked with the UN World Food Programme in
Rome, setting up REACH, the intra-agency UN agency
initiative supported with outside money notably from
the Gates Foundation, whose purpose is to end child
hunger and undernutrition. She also has strong
academic, government and civil society organisation
experience.
As head of the food and nutrition policy unit within
the Brazilian federal Ministry of Health, she was
also a professor of nutrition at the federal
university of Brasília. Much of her time in
government coincided with the period when José Serra,
who probably will be President of Brazil as from
2011 for four or eight years, was Minister of
Health. Guided by his leadership, she became a
leading representative of Brazil in some tough World
Health Organization debates, notably on infant and
young child feeding in 2001-2002. He also entrusted
her with the administration of the vast Bolsa
Alimentação (food basket) programme. Her
long-standing civil society engagement and sympathy
has been and is notably with the breastfeeding and
human rights movements, in Brazil and globally. As a
Brazilian unelected politician, she knows that
politics in Brazil is very ‘political’. Her task
now, working with Alexander Müller, is to identify
the principles to stand by that are beyond
politicking. In this task she needs friends, and
many are here, within this Association.
The editors
Acknowledgement
A substantial number of Association members have
been involved with the SCN, or served on its working
parties, some for many years. While the views of
some of these are known to the drafters of this
editorial, the usual policy of WN is that while
editorials are the responsibility of the editorial
team, reviewers are named, and it seemed appropriate
not to ask any of them to be reviewers. Responses
are as always, welcomed.
Reference
- Beaton GH, Martorell R,
Aronson KJ, Edmonston B, Ross AC, Harvey B,
McCabe G. Effectiveness of vitamin A
supplementation in the control of young
child morbidity and mortality in developing
countries. Toronto: CIDA, 1993. ACC/SCN
Nutrition policy discussion paper 13.
Request
Readers are invited please to respond. Please use
the response facility below. Readers may make use of
the material in this editorial, provided
acknowledgement is given to the Association, and WN
is cited.
Please cite as: Anon. UN Standing Committee
on Nutrition. Is it necessary to re-invent it?
[Editorial] World Nutrition, June 2010, 1, 2:
46-52. Obtainable at
www.wphna.org
The opinions expressed in all contributions to
the website of the World Public Health Nutrition
Association (the Association) including its journal
World Nutrition,
are those of their authors. They should not be taken
to be the view or policy of the Association, or of
any of its affiliated or associated bodies, unless
this is explicitly stated.
|
