A Historic Moment for Nutrition – Nutrition for Growth summit in London

On 8th June, world leaders including SUN countries came together to sign a global compact that will prevent at least 20 million children from being stunted and save at least 1.7 million lives by 2020. The Global Nutrition for Growth Compact was endorsed by 90 stakeholders, including development partners, businesses, scientific and civil society groups. This event was preceded by the launch of a new Series of papers by The Lancet containing the strongest evidence to date that urgent progress on nutrition can and must take place.

June 8, 2013 - Last update: July 4, 2022

On 8th June 2013, world leaders including SUN countries came together to sign a global compact that will prevent at least 20 million children from being stunted and save at least 1.7 million lives by 2020. The Global Nutrition for Growth Compact was endorsed by 90 stakeholders, including development partners, businesses, scientific and civil society groups. An ambitious set of individual commitments to beat hunger and improve nutrition were made including a $4.15 billion financial commitment.

The Global Nutrition for Growth Compact outlines bold targets to achieve by 2020, including:

Improving the nutrition of 500 million pregnant women and young children;
Reducing the number of children under 5 who are stunted by an additional 20 million; and
Saving the lives of at least 1.7 million children by preventing stunting, increasing breastfeeding, and improving treatment of severe and acute malnutrition.

To meet these goals, donor governments, businesses, foundations and civil society organizations have secured new commitments of $4.15 billion to scale up nutrition specific actions by 2020. Of this, $2.9 billion is core funding while the remainder will be secured through matched funding. An estimated $19 billion was committed for improved nutrition outcomes through nutrition‐sensitive investments between 2013 and 2020. These commitments included approximately $1 billion from the UK government, $4.6 billion from the European Commission, $700 million from the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation and $862.7 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The United States Government estimates average annual nutrition‐specific funding of approximately $398 million and, for nutrition‐sensitive funding, approximately $3 billion.

Nineteen SUN countries committed to increase their own investments in nutrition. Governments of 14 countries pledged to increase domestic resources to improve nutrition, and 13 countries set national stunting reduction targets that meet or exceed the World Health Assembly goals for 2025.

The Scaling Up Nutrition Movement hailed the signing the Global Nutrition for Growth Compact and the commitments as an indication of unprecedented determination to end the injustice of malnutrition.

Photos from the event

The closing panel at the Nutrition for Growth event: Bill Gates (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), Chris Hohn (CIFF), Justine Greening (UK Government), Paul Polman (Unilever), Vice-President Michel Temer (Government of Brazil), Commissioner Andris Piebalgs (EU)

Dr. David Nabarro, SUN Movement Coordinator and Dr. Mary Robinson, SUN Lead Group member at the Nutrition for Growth summit

Prime Minister of Niger, M. Brigi Rafini speaking at the Nutrition for Growth summit

Two days previously, The Lancet published a new Series of papers containing the strongest evidence to date that urgent progress on nutrition can and must take place. Read More ▶