UN Decade of Action on Nutrition 2016-2025: Introduction

Overview

All people, at all ages and at all times, should have access to affordable, diversified, safe and healthy diets. Maintaining a healthy diet throughout one’s life helps prevent all forms of malnutrition – undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies.

However, eradicating hunger and ending all forms of malnutrition are among the most pervasive development challenges of our time:

• No country is spared from malnutrition. Nearly one in three people worldwide suffers from at least one form of malnutrition.
• Unhealthy diet is now the leading risk factor for deaths worldwide.
• Most governments are currently off track to meet the World Health Assembly global targets for improving maternal, infant and young child nutrition and reducing NCD risk factors, and thus will not meet the nutrition and food security targets of the Agenda for Sustainable Development by 2030.