Malnutrition in the OIC Member
Countries: A Trap for Poverty
plans and community management of severe acute malnutrition. However, OIC countries are
acutely exposed to human and man-made disasters.
Strong regional policies are in place within OIC countries. But these need to be better
coordinated and to link more closely with national and global monitoring and evaluation
frameworks to make a bigger impact.
The challenge of malnutrition reduction lies more in the implementation of nutrition-specific
and nutrition-sensitive policies than in identifying effective policies. The fight against
malnutrition needs to be coordinated due its multi-sectoral nature. Such coordination requires
high levels of political commitment from national policymakers and a large degree of “buy-in”
from ministries and agencies. Collaboratively establishing multi-sectoral plan and common
results framework is an excellent way to strengthen both, to maximise coordination in the long
run, and to ensure the mainstreaming of nutrition in all ministries.
Many countries seem to prioritise stunting in their national development plans. Acute
malnutrition is seen as an emergency topic, and the commitment to fight overnutrition is not
as prominent as long as undernutrition remains very high. Yet, it is necessary to fight
malnutrition in all its forms.
A strong implementation of nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive policies requires to
increase commitment, knowledge and capacity of local governments. Whereas the
commitment and knowledge of national policymakers have often gone up substantially in
recent years, thanks to the SDGs, the publication of high profile reports such as the Global
Nutrition Report, and growing awareness of the costs of malnutrition, this is not always true at
the local level.
3