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Assessing the Commitment to End Hunger and Malnutrition The Hunger And Nutrition Commitment Index (HANCI) Lawrence Haddad IDS. |. Why bother measuring commitment?.
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Assessing the Commitment to End Hunger and Malnutrition The Hunger And Nutrition Commitment Index (HANCI) Lawrence Haddad IDS |
Why bother measuring commitment? • Governments cannot control all determinants of hunger and malnutrition, but they can control some—this is what we should monitor • Doing so will • Promote accountability • Guide action • Assumption: non-transparency of commitment is making it difficult for civil society to put pressure on governments to act to reduce hunger and undernutrition
HANCI • Calculated annually • Uses existing data • 45 developing countries • 22 indicators covering actions relating to • Public spending, public policy, laws and charters • 23 OECD countries • 14 indicators • Public spending, public policy, laws and charters
Methods for selecting indicators • Category selection • Literature told us to go for spending, policies and legal frameworks • Indicator selection • Theory • A couple of frameworks • Practical considerations • Availability • Year to year change
Hunger and nutrition commitment index (HANCI) rankings for rich countries (1 is best) Lawrence Haddad Institute of Development Studies
HANCI indicators for high burden countries by theme and by type of intervention Hunger only indicators inred, Hunger and Nutrition indicators in green; Nutrition only indicators in black. 1International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes
HANCI indicators for high burden countries by sector and dimension of food and nutrition security Hunger only indicators inred, Hunger and Nutrition indicators in green; Nutrition only indicators in black. 1International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes
HANCI political commitment groupings by Gross National Income per capita
Hunger Commitment only weakly correlated with Nutrition Commitment
The fastest growing economies are not the most committed High commitment countries ALL experience modest declines in stunting, even though their economies are growing slowly
Hunger and Nutrition Commitment increases with overall Government Effectiveness
Conclusions • Commitment to Hunger Reduction only loosely connected to commitment to Malnutrition Reduction (same for donors and high burden countries) • You don’t have to be relatively well off to have a high HANCI score, but it helps • The fastest growing economies are not the most committed • High commitment countries ALL experience modest declines in stunting, even though their economies are growing slowly • More effective governments have better HANCI scores • Donors seem to care more than high burden countries if they have low scores
So What? • Donor countries that do well • Canadian Foreign Minister tweeted • Irish Government put out a press release • Donor countries that do not do well • Dutch, Norwegian NGOs have found it useful to prod their governments • High Burden Countries • Oxfam India is developing its own sub-national index • We have developed 2 page guides for each country • International Initiatives • Will be one of the sources of data used in the new Global Accountability Framework out of London Summit pledges • ONE, Save the Children, CIFF using it to guide work
Future Work • Explore causality • What drives commitment? • Does commitment drive nutrition performance? • Do more analyses that separate out HRCI and NCI • Build in Overnutrition issues • Work with FAO and INGOs to popularise use • Evaluate HANCI • Econometrics • Interview policymakers from countries on list to gauge their reactions • Do more primary data work • Constructed by national stakeholders, • Different commitment index in each country • Follow it over time for each country • Good starting point for a discussion about efforts to reduce hunger and malnutrition