Forward0
A Position Paper of Multiply-Ed and PRO-Health
While there has been a significant decline in incidences of malnutrition and stunting in the country, the decline has been slow. Likely, the progress made will be overtaken by population growth.
Recognizing the critical link between nutrition and education outcomes, the Education Commission zeroed in on the need for a “unified agency action to fix nutrition programs in early years.”
There is a need to strengthen the coordination and convergence of all agencies responsible for nutrition. The problem of malnutrition and stunting can be best addressed with a holistic and integrated approach that is foregrounded on poverty reduction and empowerment.
The National Nutrition Council is considered as “the highest policy-making body on nutrition.” It is expected to coordinate and lead the action of the country on nutrition. While there is representation for the private sector and non-government organizations, including those from the women’s sector in the said council, there is still a need to strengthen, in particular, the representation of mothers and students.
Multiply-Ed (X-Ed) is a national initiative of Government Watch (G-Watch | www.g-watch.org) and the Center for Youth Advocacy and Networking (CYAN) in cooperation with various youth and student organizations and with support from Education Out Loud of the Global Partnership for Education. It aims to improve transparency, participation, and accountability in various levels of education governance, particularly in ensuring learning continuity and recovery in senior high schools towards a public education system that is resilient, gender-responsive, accessible and accountable to education stakeholders, especially for marginalized learners.
Promoting Rights Organizing for Health or PRO-Health is a multi-level and multi-sectoral coalition of organizations of accountability frontliners and rights defenders coordinated by Government Watch (G-Watch) that aims to strengthen transparency, participation and accountability in public health governance. It aims to create and claim democratic spaces to monitor and advocate for pro-people and bottom-up solutions to systemic barriers and hurdles to reproductive, maternal, newborn and adolescent health (RMNCAH) services.
Multiply-Ed monitoring of learning continuity plans surfaced that the feeding program of the Department of Education is a crucial support for students, especially for those coming from the poorest of the poor.
PRO-Health, on the other hand, noted in its monitoring that while services under the First 1000 Days are among the most accessible health services in community health units, the availability and quality of services for mothers and children remain highly varied across the country.
Multiply-Ed and PRO-Health assert that the lack of representation for mothers and students in multi-sectoral bodies on nutrition is a crucial gap that needs to be addressed. Both maintain that the representation of mothers and students in national and local nutrition councils can provide the holistic and pro-poor perspective in nutrition policy-making.
We call on all concerned policy-makers to consider this recommendation.
In particular, we call on legislators to consider this in the bills that aim to strengthen the country’s nutrition programs.
We ask local governments to explore the inclusion of mothers and students in their local nutrition councils as members or advisers consistent with existing policies.
We call on the National Nutrition Council to immediately involve and seek immediate legal ways to institutionalize the participation of mothers and students in its council.