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By Faustine Wabwire, Bread for the World Institute

The Third International Financing for Development Conference is well underway in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Today, July 14, 2015, Bread for the World joined other leaders at a high-level side event — Financing Growth: Mobilizing Leadership and Investment in Nutrition.

The objectives of the multi-stakeholder event included:

• Highlight the importance of prioritizing nutrition financing in the proposed Sustainable Development Goals;
• Explore the need for greater cooperation and partnership to mobilize all sources of finance — including domestic and international, public and private — to target both nutrition specific and nutrition sensitive interventions; and
• Provide a launching pad for discussion on the global stunting target, and the first global financial estimates necessary to achieve the six global nutrition targets.

Why does investing in nutrition matter for the SDGs?

Malnutrition is part of the unfinished MDG agenda. Improving nutrition among pregnant women, lactating mothers, and young children, in particular, is key to ending preventable child deaths and to unlocking the potential of the millions of people who face early childhood malnutrition.

Since 2000, there is new knowledge about the manifestation and impact of malnutrition. While significant progress in reducing the proportion of children who are underweight has been made in many regions, stunting is the leading cause of death and disability among children under 5. According to UNICEF, there are 162 million stunted children around the world today. Being far too short for their age is only the most visible sign. Their cognitive and physical development has been compromised by chronic malnutrition, and for their entire lives, they will be more likely to suffer from health problems — all of which will make them less productive than they could be.In the end, stunting is not only a tragedy for individuals and families, it also impedes a nation’s ability to develop economically. Among potential indicators of malnutrition, childhood stunting has proven to be the most powerful, based on its ability to capture inequity; reveal chronic problems of poor health, diet, and child-rearing practices; and focus on the period when the effects of malnutrition are largely irreversible (the 1,000 Days from pregnancy through age 2).

The Third Financing for Development Conference presents a golden opportunity for all of us — world leaders, civil society and the private sector — to commit to make nutrition-specific  and nutrition-sensitive interventions a higher priority in the post-2015 global development agenda. The proposed SDGs include an ambitious but achievable goal: “To end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture”. Currently, the world is off-track to meet the global stunting target to reduce the number of children under 5 who suffer from stunting by 40% by the year 2025. The Addis Conference presents a call to action to mobilize both financial and non-financial resources.  Bread for the World Institute's newly released paper, Strengthening Local Capacity: The Weak Link in Sustainable Development argues that non-financial commitments such as strong domestic institutions, political will, data, monitoring and accountability are just as important to ensure that investments lead to impact.

Faustine Wabwire is the senior foreign assistance policy analyst at Bread for the World Institute