What are the key findings of the 2012 Hunger and Nutrition Commitment Index?

HANCI reports separately for developing countries and donor countries. The key findings for developing countries are:

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1. Guatemala claims top spot and Guinea Bissau is worst performing country in 2012.

Guatemala is a resounding number one on our list. When compared to the other 44 countries that were assessed, Guatemala performs best for both hunger and nutrition commitment. It does especially well in terms of nutrition commitment. This is very encouraging as particularly undernutrition constitutes a major challenge for Guatemala. The country has one of the world’s highest child stunting rates (48%), and annually loses over US$300 million in GDP to vitamin and mineral deficiencies. The Global Hunger Index considers the situation in Guatemala to be ‘alarming’. Accordingly, while much remains to be done, and substantial social inequities persist between indigenous and other communities, hunger and nutrition outcomes in Guatemala are gradually improving. This is partially thanks to substantial political commitment expressed through a range of efforts by the Government of Guatemala:

• Ensuring high level of access to drinking water (92% of the population)
• Ensuring good levels of access to improved sanitation (78%);
• Promoting complementary feeding practices, and ensuring over nine out of ten pregnant women are visited by a skilled health personnel at least once before delivery;
• Investing substantially in health and having a separate nutrition budget line to make its spending accountable to all;
• Putting in place a Zero Hunger Plan that aims to reduce chronic malnutrition in children less than 5 years of age by 10% in 2016;
• Ensuring that public policy is informed by robust and up to date evidence on nutrition statuses;
• Establishing a multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder coordination mechanism that is regionally recognised as an example of good practice.

Guinea Bissau shows the lowest level of political commitment to reduce hunger and undernutrition. This is very worrying, because the country faces very serious hunger and nutrition challenges. The Global Hunger Index considers the situation in Guinea Bissau to be ‘alarming’. Child stunting rates are fairly high (28%), though not as high as in Guatemala (48%), but the contrast in government commitment levels is very sharp.

Guinea Bissau fails to invest in agriculture, despite a commitment to invest 10% of its budgets in agriculture (as part of the African Union’s Maputo Declaration). Access to agricultural extension services is weak. While Guinea Bissau makes modest investments in health, it is not yet setting aside budgets for nutrition. Its nutrition policies, while not altogether lacking, need substantial strengthening, for instance by instituting coordination mechanisms and by establishing time bound nutrition targets. Guinea Bissau needs to strengthen people’s right to social security, and enhance very weak economic rights for women. While this leaves women especially vulnerable to hunger and destitution, there are yet no effective safety nets to protect them and other vulnerable groups.

2. Economic growth has not necessarily led to a commitment from governments to tackle hunger and undernutrition

Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are global hotspots of hunger and undernutrition. Here, not only is hunger and undernutrition prevalence high, this is also where hunger is increasing most rapidly. Many countries within these regions have achieved substantial and sustained economic growth over the last decade. This makes it possible for governments to more effectively address hunger and undernutrition. Yet, progress on reducing hunger and undernutrition is either too slow (e.g. South Asia) or stagnating (sub-Saharan Africa).

• Low wealth or slow economic growth in a country does not necessarily imply low levels of political commitment.

Our data shows that in cases where there are serious hunger and nutrition challenges, low aggregate and per capita wealth in a country does not mean that governments are simply unable to act on hunger and undernutrition. For instance, Angola and Malawi both have an ‘alarming’ and Guinea Bissau a ‘serious’ hunger status (IFPRI, 2012). Out of these three countries, Malawi has by far the lowest Gross National Income per capita ($870, as compared to Guinea Bissau ($1240) and Angola ($5230), and relatively slower economic growth. Yet, Malawi ranks 2^nd on the HANCI, while Angola and Guinea Bissau languish at the bottom of the league table. Similarly, India’s child stunting rates are at a par with Guatemala. The latter’s somewhat higher GNI per head ($4390 compared to $3590) however seems insufficient to explain the divergence in political commitment levels.

• Significantly, within areas of high and growing hunger and undernutrition prevalence, some countries are clearly showing much greater political commitment to address these problems than others

Thus, the political commitment levels of the global rising economic powers (BRIICS) vary substantially. South Africa performs strongly on hunger commitment, and relatively poorly on nutrition commitment. Brazil and Indonesia perform well overall. China does well in terms of hunger commitment, though less strongly on nutrition commitment. India’s commitment ranking is lowest within the group of BRICS, even though its hunger and nutrition situation is the most serious.

Within sub-Saharan Africa, there are some success stories to be told. Some of the smaller economic powers (Malawi, Madagascar, The Gambia) are now leading the charge against hunger and undernutrition, leaving traditional powerhouses (South Africa, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Kenya, Angola) in their wake.

3. We find that countries’ commitment to hunger reduction do not tally with their commitment to improving nutrition.

In fact, we found a low correlation between the two. This is demonstrated by the divergent performance of countries such as Nepal, South Africa and Mali on the two sub-indices.

• Nepal ranks number three for nutrition commitment, but ranks only 34th (out of 44 countries) for hunger reduction commitment
• Peru ranks 2nd highest for hunger reduction commitment, 11th for nutrition commitment
• The Gambia ranks 24th for hunger commitment, 2nd for nutrition commitment.
• Mali ranks 5th on hunger commitment and 29th on nutrition commitment
• South Africa shows 2nd highest commitment levels for hunger reduction, though ranks 36th for nutrition commitment

 

The key findings for the HANCI Donor Index are:

1. UK amongst leading countries in fight against hunger and undernutrition. The UK particularly owes its high ranking, just beating Canada and Denmark, to its strong performance on policy, programmes and legal indicators. It does well for supporting the Scaling Up Nutrition movement (SUN); biodiversity protecting agreements and relatively low levels of protection of domestic agricultural markets. In terms of spending, the UK has a strong record delivering on its commitments for nutrition; whereas its ODA support for nutrition (while not being highest) have been stable and enduring over the last decade.

However, the UK scores poorly when compared to other countries on several spending indicators: its levels of aid funding for agricultural development, food security and climate change are comparatively low.

2. Canada does well on policies, programmes and legal indicators. It supports the SUN movement, does well in terms of low protection of agricultural markets and sets relatively low biofuel blending mandates, and is amongst the top performers in terms of delivering on its green house gas emission reduction pledges. Its performance on spending indicators is variable. Canada leads in terms of its enduringly stable financial support for agriculture and food security over the last decade. It does also fairly well on this for nutrition. However, Canada also shows weak spending performance on social protection and climate change adaptation and mitigation.

3. Denmark scores well for spending indicators. It gives a solid performance in terms of supporting nutrition, and this support is stable and enduring. It also invests well in climate change adaptation and mitigation. Spending support for climate change is not entirely coherent with policy action on this. Denmark does poorly in terms of delivering on its greenhouse gas emission reduction pledges, yet is leading on the development of domestic climate change adaptation strategies and plans.

4. Ireland gains especially strong scores on biodiversity, endorsement of SUN, and is amongst the top donors investing in social protection. Ireland also shows enduring and stable financial support for agriculture and food security.

5. Good development partners could do more for hunger and nutrition. Donors championing the cause of hunger and nutrition are not necessarily the biggest spenders. The ten highest HANCI Donor rankings are not strongly correlated to the share of the Gross National Income (GNI) given as aid. This also suggests that countries that have a relatively good track record on international development like France, Norway, the Netherlands and Switzerland, who are not in the top 10 HANCI rankings, could do more for hunger and nutrition.