Malnutrition in the OIC Member
Countries: A Trap for Poverty
Stakeholders reported enthusiasm from other ministries and agencies; as the current system
critically lacks integration of the many nutrition-related programmes in existence.
Challenges on the Ground
Two independent stakeholders from CSO and Academia felt that the SUN Movement is not
making progress as the nutrition problems of maternal and child nutrition are stagnant.
Stunting and wasting rates remain very high, and overweight is on the rise.
The stakeholder interviews highlighted several challenges perceived to ultimately hamper the
progress of malnutrition reduction in Indonesia. The upmost challenge is the need to foster
accountability to nutrition in Indonesia. Almost half of all stakeholders agree that the existence
of regulation or an Action Plan on nutrition is often deemed a great outcome on its own,
overlooking the gap between regulation and implementation.
The above-mentioned challenge to implement nutrition policy and programmes is mostly
rooted in the suboptimal inter-sector collaboration among government agencies and multi­
stakeholder coordination between government, CSOs, International Organisations, NGOs,
private sector and academics. Although the awareness of nutrition among different sectors and
stakeholders is considered to be rising at the national level and the political commitment for
nutrition is available, several stakeholders perceive that the only highly engaged government
sectors are the Ministry of Health and Bappenas. This means that an active role from other
ministries is not yet fully seen. According to two stakeholders from government sectors,
commitment for nutrition will only be seen when the relevant sectors have pin-pointed
funding allocations and programme planning.
The third challenge is the suboptimal vertical coordination between national government at
the national level and the local governments at provincial and district levels as the actual
implementers on the ground, resulting in varied compliance between them. Ever since
decentralisation was effectively implemented in Indonesia in 2000, 34 provinces and 512
districts throughout the country have been given wide-ranging authorities. As a result, the role
of the central government is mostly a steering one, through providing guidelines, norms, and
standards. It can only reach the local government at the provincial level, and cannot directly
reach the district-level government unless the district is extremely troubled. It is the
responsibility of the provincial governments to manage and reach the district-level
governments that fall under their purview. Thus, variation in nutrition progress is inevitable.
With regard to the National Action Plan for Food and Nutrition, the big challenge is its
implementation which takes place at the sub-national level: province and district. Not all local
governments comply with the national direction to formulate the Regional Action Plan for
Food and Nutrition (RADPG] and the central government seems to be aware of the issue of low
compliance. As a stakeholder from Bappenas states, the actual challenge lays in setting-up an
effective monitoring system.
An incentive-based scheme seems required to increase compliance of local governments with
the national guidelines or directions. Six out of eight stakeholders imply the need to trigger
motivation and/or pressure for the local government to demonstrate results and impacts from
the state budget transferred by the central government. Incentive mechanisms can be initiated
through the inclusion of nutrition outcome as one of the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs] of
both Governor (at the province level] and Mayor (at the district level).
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