COMCEC
Malnutrition in the OIC Member
Countries: A Trap for Poverty
labelling of breastmilk substitutes about the superiority of breastfeeding and ensuring
monitoring and enforcement of laws and regulations designed to promote and protect
breastfeeding (World Health Organization 2010).
Regarding breastfeeding in OIC countries, it is worth noting that the Holy Quran also
encourages breastfeeding for two years "Mothers shall breastfeed their children for two whole
years, for those who wish to complete the term" (2:233).
The remainder of this section presents the various regional targets and policies related to
reducing and preventing various forms of malnutrition within the OIC regions. First policies
related to all of Africa are presented, followed by smaller regional economic groupings and
their associated policies. This is followed by policies for Asia and then Europe. The OIC
countries which are members of the regional community are listed at the start of each section.
African Regional Policies
Africa Union Regional Nutrition Strategy
OIC Member Countries: Algeria; Chad; Egypt; Guinea; Libya; Mali; Mauritania; Niger; Senegal;
Somalia (excluding Somaliland); Sudan; Tunisia; Sierra Leone; Gabon; The Gambia, Guinea
Bissau; Uganda; Burkina Faso, Cameroon; Comoros; Djibouti; Benin; Nigeria; Mozambique;
Togo; Ivory Coast.
The African continent was the first region to develop a nutrition strategy, which was presented
at the International Conference on Nutrition in 1992, covering the period from 1993-2003. The
strategy informed most member states in Africa when developing national nutrition plans;
however, there was little decline in the rates of malnutrition over the time period covered by
the plan, despite the efforts of the countries. Reasons for the ineffectiveness of the initial
Africa-wide nutrition strategy include a lack of resources, donor dependence, failure to
integrate a multisector approach and an excessive focus on curing, rather than preventing
malnutrition (Engesveen et al. 2013). The second version, the Africa Union Regional Nutrition
Strategy 2005-2015, aimed at integrating current international initiatives, such as the Scaling-
Up Nutrition Movement (SUN) and Renewed Efforts Against Child Hunger and Undernutrition
(REACH), as well as taking into considerations the reasons for the failure of the previous
strategy. This strategy was followed by a large number of African countries to guide the
development of new national policies. The current African Union nutrition strategy (2015­
2025) was adopted by the AU executive council in June 2015.
The most recent policy builds on the UNICEF conceptual framework (presented in section 2)
and recognises that poor nutrition is caused by a range of immediate, underlying and basic
causes and that a multi-sectoral approach is necessary. It builds on the evidence which has
been generated over the last ten years and recognises that food alone will not effectively
address malnutrition in Africa and that other health and psychosocial care practices need to be
addressed in order to improve African nutrition security. The new policy represents a
“paradigm shift” in which the African Union Commission (AUC] will have a greater role to
play: in the implementation of policies and in ensuring that existing initiatives are fully
implemented (African Union 2015). The new policy also supports moving away from a narrow
focus on nutrition-specific interventions - which had previously been the main focus of
nutrition programmes in Africa - towards nutrition-sensitive programmes which address the
underlying and basic causes of poor nutrition. Nutrition-sensitive programmes are necessary
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