Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-64)
MR ALEX
REES
22 APRIL 2008
Q60 John Battle: We took evidence from
the Executive Director of the World Food Programme, and I know
that Save the Children talked about the need for the UN to sort
out who has the lead responsibility in tackling the food crisis.
Which UN agencies should be responsible for reducing food insecurity,
in your view? How would the structure look?
Mr Rees: It would be very nice
to blow it open and reconstruct the architecture but reality dictates
that we cannot do that and we have a number of institutions that
have a role to play. As Save the Children, we would really want
to highlight the importance that nutrition plays. It is not just
a little sector; it is an outcome for children, for adults, of
a range of sectors and therefore the architecture globally and
at country level needs to focus more effectively especially on
outcomes.
Q61 John Battle: UNICEF. Richard
Jolly was saying that 30 years ago, so you would go with UNICEF,
would you?
Mr Rees: There is obviously a
lot of work to do still. The Lancet series in January clearly
highlighted the fragmented and dysfunctional nature of the nutrition
system. There are many elements to that. One of them is within
DFID itself, which is that there is recognition of its importance,
there is some good analytical perspective on nutrition, but there
are few strides to put it up there as a target and therefore to
get the kind of incentive—
Q62 John Battle: One organisation
that did that when we were tackling polio and the rest of it was
UNICEF, that went on nutrition, and they have always focused on
the balance of nutrition. I am really wanting to focus on the
architecture. Are you saying that Richard Jolly should have really
started to pull the bolt through, as it were, and reorganise the
architecture of the UN with UNICEF—he is not there now but
should he have done it? We have heard an almost implicit idea
that it should remain the World Food Programme that should headline
the initiative. Who should do it? I do not want you just to tell
me that it is unreal to imagine a fresh start with the architecture.
What should this architecture look like coming through the other
end to deliver what we need to be delivered?
Mr Rees: At the end of the day,
it has to work at a country level to be able to impact on children
and families. There is no doubt that UNICEF, the World Bank, the
WFP, and the FAO all have a role to play. As we move down the
road of One UN, if malnutrition and nutritional outcomes more
broadly can be considered as one of the absolutely key, fundamental,
driving factors, it is much more likely to move the institutions
together and ensure that, whether that be work on healthcare,
water and sanitation, household food security, building up livelihoods,
they all combine to provide the kind of outcomes on nutrition
that we want to move towards MDG 1.
Q63 John Battle: I accept that. In
your evidence you are suggesting that it is not just through nutrition
but there is a range, is there not? There is income generation,
education, skills and training, and social protection. At the
end, I am left a bit confused thinking it is everything again,
that there is not a clear headline focus that pulls the thing
together. Do you think it will be nutrition? Will that be the
theme that pulls it together?
Mr Rees: I think nutrition is
incredibly important because it is measurable, for a start. Food
security, as a food security person, has always been slightly
airy-fairy. There are all sorts of technical debates around how
you might measure food security. Nutritional outcomes are extremely
tight. You can measure children. You know if they are stunted,
you know if they are wasted and they are not getting enough food.
That is why it is the second indicator of MDG 1. It just has not
been taken up to the kind of level it needs to to be absorbed
into systems of planning and frameworks and such like. There is
at the moment rather an over-focus on food, and there has been,
although it is declining, and also there is a lack of emphasis
on the whole economic generation, or, let us say, the economic
focus that is most people's livelihoods, whether you be in south
Asia or sub-Saharan Africa. Very few people are growing more of
their food than they are buying, so therefore support to agriculture
can only go so far. What we need to put in place, whether that
be trading opportunities, other types of investment, processing,
those are the ways that most people earn their living and therefore
can buy food and all sorts of other important items.
Q64 Chairman: We did of course devise
a system of agriculture in Europe which was designed to achieve
self-sufficiency but rather overdid it. Thank you very much for
that. It is obvious that this is an issue where there are a lot
of different mechanisms in different circumstances. In an ideal
world each country would be doing the leading and the co-ordination,
the governments of those countries. Clearly, many of those governments
do not have the capacity to do so or are suffering from conflict
or whatever, so we are inevitably going to have to work through
a whole variety of different agencies. I appreciate that you have
a somewhat different approach from the other witnesses, so thank
you for coming and sharing that with us. If you could give us
a summary of that Swaziland case, that would be helpful.
Mr Rees: Absolutely. Thank you
very much for this chance to give evidence and if there is the
opportunity to look into nutrition more broadly within DFID, that
would be good.
Chairman: You are not the first person
who has been encouraging us to do that.
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