Afghanistan: Feeding the Children of Afghanistan Together

What We Do » Children, Food Security and Nutrition » Feeding the Children of Afghanistan Together
 
Reduce Child Mortality

JOINT PROGRAMME QUICK FACTS

Total Budget $5,000,000
Delivery Rate
Participating Agencies FAO, WFP, UNICEF, WHO, UNIDO
Main Achievements
  • The JP is continuing advocacy to ensure an integrated approach to nutrition and food security, and providing support for the development of a multi-sectoral plan of action on nutrition and a Food Security Policy. JP is also working to include nutrition in lower school curricula (reaching 6.5 million children) and developing curricula for nutrition courses at university level.
  • To strengthen nutritional education and status and improve household incomes, JP has set up 66 model gardens (1,350 beneficiaries); 22 clinic gardens in health facilities; 34 school gardens (involving 2,472 children); 1351 kitchen gardens (15,765 direct beneficiaries); 500 backyard poultries and 200 beekeeping facilities.
  • Community-based monitoring of maternal and child malnutrition, and capacity-building of government staff (1,246 health/extension rural development) is ongoing. JP is assisting in measuring the effectiveness of the current basic health package in delivering nutritional services.
Contact Nina Dodd, JP Coordinator
baydulloeva@un.org

According to UNICEF, 60 percent of Afghan children are stunted because of poor feeding practices and malnutrition, and 2 out of 5 are moderately to severely underweight.

The joint UN programme Feeding the Children of Afghanistan Together is tackling the issue by promoting an integrated package of nutrition and food security interventions at the community level. It brings together health, agricultural and education activities to attack the immediate and underlying causes of malnutrition, by empowering communities to use their own resources to create lasting solutions to the problem.

The programme is helping to establish the necessary policy frameworks, legislation, national capacity, coordination mechanisms and information management to support interventions at central, provincial, district and community-levels for the medium and long-term.


Its approach is based on the concept of "right to food" and builds upon the broad range of nutrition and food security initiatives carried out since the fall of the Taliban, harnessing technical expertise from FAO, UNICEF, UNIDO, WFP, and WHO.

Feeding the Children of Afghanistan Together is grounded in the MDG-F's mission to ensure that advances in development occur equitably and reach the most marginalized and excluded populations.

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