April 10, 2019
Roula Majdalani, UN-ESCWA
Undernutrition, a type of malnutrition, results from inadequate quantity and quality of food, which manifests itself in underweight in the general population, or stunting and wasting in children below 5 years of age. The prevalence of undernourishment, notably in the Arab Least Developed Countries (LDC) including Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, and Mauritania, has been discussed at length, with a looming famine crisis unfolding in the case of Yemen. According to WHO, the Arab LDCs have a “high prevalence” rate of underweight with more than 30% of the population undernourished, while over 25% of children are stunted and 15% wasted.
Several concomitant factors lead to the observed undernourishment situation in Arab LDCs where low per capita income, non-existent social safety nets and poor natural resources endowment, result in low food production and consequently an overreliance on food aid for survival. Protracted crises and emerging conflicts make the population and particularly the marginalized communities vulnerable to external shocks (e.g., global food and oil price hikes) compounded by negative impact of climate change and global warming. Furthermore, the weak human, technological and institutional capacities reinforce a vicious cycle of low productivity and low investment, leading to the alarming malnutrition situation prevailing in those countries. Estimates of the cost of undernutrition goes as high as 4 percent of GDP in the most affected countries and given this startling trend, it is unlikely that the impacted countries will be able to achieve the Zero Hunger aim of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.
In contrast, other Arab countries, like the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, are experiencing major and transformative socio-economic changes such as urbanization, greater affluence, fast growing population, and changes in lifestyles. Greater availability and diversity of food products have resulted in changes in food consumption patterns, which led to increasing rates of obesity in the region. For example, a recent survey on obesity in the Arab region indicates an upturn in fast food and sugar dense beverages consumption over the last two decades. This coincides with an “up and out” city expansion and technological advances leading to more cars, elevators and, escalators that decreased the level of physical activity. The obesity rates in the Arab region have become the highest in the world with approximately one quarter of the population estimated as being obese (double the world’s average), putting some countries among the top 10 countries in the world with the highest prevalence.
In 2017, Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) produced a publication entitled “Arab Horizon 2030: Prospects for Enhancing Food Security in the Arab Region,” which, highlighted the simultaneous plight of overnutrition and undernutrition, also referred to as the “double burden of malnutrition”, making sharp socio-economic inequalities within and between Arab countries.
ESCWA’s findings are echoed in a number of related studies and surveys undertaken by sister organizations in the region. In fact, a study conducted in three GCC countries Bahrain, Kuwait and United Arab Emirates (UAE), revealed that 50% of the most frequently consumed home-delivered food items consisted mainly of burger and fries, and no healthy or vegetable-based food were among those top consumed. The ease and unlimited accessibility to fast food and calorie dense meals through home delivery systems, is encouraging city dwellers to consume more energy while comparatively burning very little calories. The time and energy that used to be spent in the past, on grocery shopping and meal preparation in the kitchen has been dramatically reduced to an almost immediate access to food, without any associated physical activity.
Hence, the availability, accessibility and utilization of food is a driving force of malnutrition; be it undernourishment or obesity. This calls for better strategies to detect, prevent and treat malnutrition notably through a strengthening of food and nutrition programs at community level including, among others, raising awareness and responding to acute cases of undernourishment. Chief among these is the need to build an efficient monitoring system, which could provide policy makers and other stakeholders with tools to identify early potential hotspots.
To this end, ESCWA has collaborated with the Arab Organization for Agriculture Development (AOAD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on a Food Security Monitoring Framework which will be launched later this year. The aim of the Framework is to provide Arab countries with a tool to help assess the level of food security in a given country over time. It provides information on agriculture, government expenditures, nutrition status, food imports and exports as well as environmental factors and climate change that can affect food security in a given country. Twenty-four indicators were developed on the basis of their relevance to Arab countries and data availability to allow easy and continuous monitoring by local institutional and stakeholders. The Framework covers four key pillars of food security: availability, accessibility, utilization, and stability, while considering prevalence of nutrition factors: wasting, stunting and anemia. Core indicators are also taken into consideration: undernourishment and obesity rates in addition to Food Insecurity Experience Scale.
This Monitoring Framework is a powerful, easy to use and promising tool that could be adopted by policy makers and governments, to better track and assess their food security status, and hence, contribute to achieving the Agenda 2030 on Sustainable Development and particularly the Sustainable Development Goal 2: Zero Hunger.
