Human Rights
UNSCN News 43: Advancing equity, equality and non-discrimination in food systems: Pathways to reform
Inherent barriers exist in food systems that prevent people from overcoming persistent and intergenerational malnutrition and poverty. To overcome these barriers and ensure that no one is left behind, systematic analysis of food system dynamics, as well as the various causes of malnutrition, help assess how equity impacts and is impacted by nutrition.
Inequality refers to differences, variation and disparities in the living conditions of individuals and groups. Inequity adds a moral dimension, referring to the process by which certain outcomes are produced, to the way in which wealth is distributed, and to how needs are assessed and addressed (adapted from Norheim and Asada’s definition, 2009). Equity is concerned with fairness and social justice and aims to focus on people’s needs rather than the provision of services to reach the greatest number of people.
This issue of UNSCN News explores some of the drivers of malnutrition, how they intersect and overlap, and how this intensifies the exclusion of certain groups of people.
The papers in this edition examine:
- Political economies as gears to unlock healthy and sustainable food systems
- Food environments that help shape positive food choices and lifestyles
- Production methods that support the availability of nutritious diets
- Ways to improve the collection and curation of disaggregated data to shed light on inequalities
- Evolving cultural norms to effect nutritional intake at household level
- Children’s rights-based approaches to promote more effective obesity- and non-communicable disease-prevention strategies
- Solutions that take full advantage of innovation and technology to close the gender gap
- Methods for the international nutrition research to extend and deepen its treatment of equity issues
- International instruments to more systematically underpin efforts aimed at bettering nutrition
Hard copies are available upon request from scn@fao.org.
