The works of the Annual Regional Meeting of the Officials of the Nutrition Programs in the Early Childhood Nutrition (ECN) commenced today (Monday) at Ramada Qurum Beach Hotel.

The meeting, which hosted by the Sultanate, is organized by the UNICEF Middle East and North Africa Regional Office (MENARO).

The multi-country meeting aims at improving the early child nutrition through strengthened policies and programs for early childhood nutrition in countries of the region.   

The three-day meeting will be guided by the UNICEF’s Strategic Plan 2018-2021 that reflects UNICEF’s new ambition for Maternal and Child Nutrition in support of the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030 and its commitment to the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition 2016-2025.

The meeting comes also to achieve other objectives including strengthen understanding on the importance to invest in early childhood nutrition to prevent all forms of malnutrition and linkages with other sectors (WASH and ECD in particular), discuss actions that policy-makers, program managers and other relevant stakeholders can take to create an enabling environment with relevant policies and services for early childhood nutrition.

In addition, it discuss actions for making the country office nutrition programs more sensitive to emergency response (i.e. improving synergies between development and emergency nutrition programs), as well as initiate the development of country-specific action plans in support of early childhood nutrition and plans to document success stories and lessons learned from the Region as part of the commitment to knowledge generation.

The meeting highlights the UNICEF Strategic Plan 2018-2021, global and regional trends and plan of the nutrition situation, importance of improving diet diversity in young children and prevention of overweight and obesity in children.

It also touches on the experience of Oman on addressing the high levels of overweight and obesity,  the Countries identify challenges, opportunities and commit to action to move the needle on improving the diets of young children, the Cross-Sectoral Collaboration, WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) and Health, and Nutrition in Emergencies:  Highlight the centrality of ECN and maternal nutrition and the prevention of stunting…etc.

The meeting presents country experiences that share their respective success stories such as Oman, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, and Palestine.