Food systems are currently affected by secondary impacts from Covid-19 and children are likely to be amongst the most impacted. Hong Menea
The UN is conducting a series of dialogues with children in Cambodia and 19 other countries to gain a fresh perspective on poverty-driven food insecurity, the cascading consequences of climate change on food systems and implications for nutrition and health, ahead of a key summit set for later this year.
The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) on July 1 said it held four such national dialogues in the Kingdom on June 24-25 with 40 children aged 10-19, in conjunction with the Council of Agriculture and Rural Development (CARD).
The dialogues will help steer the agenda of the Food Systems Summit, scheduled to take place in September alongside the UN General Assembly in New York City in the US, UNICEF said.
It noted that the summit would be under the umbrella of the Decade of Action, a worldwide push to ensure that the objectives framed in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are met by 2030.
"With only 10 years remaining, many of the 17 SDGs remain far out of reach. In many cases, unsustainable food systems – meaning the production, processing, transport, and consumption of food – are part of the problem," the UN agency said.
It added that the summit is "designed to be a turning point in the world’s journey to achieving lasting change".
"School-age children and adolescents need good nutrition to support their physical and mental development.
"Unfortunately, many are vulnerable to malnutrition due to factors including limited access to safe and healthy food, low income, poverty, and prevailing cultural norms related to feeding and childcare.
"This contributes to stunting which has a lifelong impact. The large number of severely wasted Cambodian children who are not receiving treatment adds to the burden of morbidity and mortality in the under-5 population.
"The period of adolescence is a second window of opportunity to avoid further malnutrition through targeted nutrition services," UNICEF said.
The Kingdom's economic success in recent years has significantly narrowed the depth of its food deficit, it said.
The proportion of the population reported as undernourished declined from 29 per cent in 2001 to 15.3 per cent in 2016, it said citing its sister UN agency Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
Even so, UNICEF added, many households spend more than 70 per cent of income on food, some 2.3 million Cambodians still experience severe food insecurity, while 32 per cent of Cambodian children under-5 were found to suffer from chronic malnutrition as recently as 2014.
Hean Sopheap, a 14-year-old schoolboy who participated in the dialogues said: “In my commune, our struggle is drought and a lack of water, some years our crops yielded less harvest, and in some seasons everything died during the dry season because there was no water to grow rice and crops.
"I want our community to develop better animal and plant breeding skills, so we can have more crop yields and meat without using chemical substances to increase production,” he was quoted by UNICEF as saying.
The Kingdom's annual economic burden of malnutrition tops $400 million, or 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), the UN agency said.
It said national programmes currently treat just around 10 per cent of the children estimated to suffer from severe acute malnutrition nationwide.
"The ongoing Social Impact Assessment for Covid-19, supported by UNICEF and other partners, shows households have increasingly adopted negative coping strategies for accessing food, including reducing food intake or turning to cheaper and less healthy ingredients.
"The dialogues with these children and young people will help UNICEF, the Royal Government of Cambodia, and other partners understand the views and perspectives of children on food systems.
"The dialogues will explore their experiences, insights, and ideas about how food systems should evolve.
Food systems are currently affected by secondary impacts from Covid-19 and children are likely to be amongst the most impacted, so ensuring their engagement at this stage is essential," UNICEF said
UNICEF representative to Cambodia Foroogh Foyouzat noted that younger people are particularly susceptible to the negative impacts of food insecurity.
"Not only do they need healthy, sustainable nutrition to grow and learn, but they will have to live on a planet that can be severely impacted by how food systems operate.
“We know that food systems contribute to a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, and use of fertilisers and pesticides can also have a devastating ecological impact.
"We need young people to be part of the decisions that will directly impact their futures and we need their innovative thinking to reimagine a new way of building food systems, one that serves healthy people and a healthy planet,” he was quoted as saying.
UNICEF stressed that the dialogues it holds worldwide will "culminate in a high-level advocacy event on behalf of the youth participants during the Food Systems Summit".
"The dialogue sessions are guided by child-friendly methods and materials developed in collaboration with UNICEF and The Western Sydney University.
"UNICEF would like to recognise the leadership of CARD on the Food Systems Dialogues in Cambodia and acknowledge the contribution of Western Sydney University, Plan International, World Food Programme and Helen Keller International in making the dialogues a success," it added.
