UNICEF International conference against child undernutrition

"Bridging the nutrition security gap in Sub-Saharan Africa: a pathway to strengthen resilience and development"

An ambitious set of goals on stunting and acute malnutrition has been adopted by the World Health Assemblyin 2012. These goals are attainable, but only if concrete, effective interventions are implemented at scale and if the key importance of child undernutrition is integrated into the post 2015 development agenda.

UNICEF built strategically on this global momentum by holding a high-level meeting, not only to focus on child undernutrition, but to highlight both the urgent need - and unprecedented opportunity - to address this problem in sub-Saharan Africa, and in doing so to strengthen social and economic progress and resilience in a region that has fallen behind the rest of the world in terms of child nutrition. Momentum in Africa is also building to tackle the problem, and this conference highlighted the way forward.

Organized in Paris, this conference constituted a unique opportunity to engage France as well as key States of the European Union, especially given the upcoming G8 summit and the discussion of the post-2015 development agenda.
Initiated by UNICEF, this conference was supported by major partners: the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Action contre la Faim (ACF), Agence Française de Développement (AFD), the Alliance for International Medical Action (ALIMA), the Bill and Melinda Gate Foundation and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). It
also benefitted from inputs of other key stakeholders at global level and at regional level in West and Central Africa.