Mainstreaming nutrition in poverty reduction strategy papers: what does it take?
Due to their multisectoral nature Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) offer a unique opportunity to fight malnutrition, the agreed upon indicator monitoring the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 1. Nutrition interventions should therefore become an integral component of poverty reduction strategies.
This paper reviews 40 PRSPs and finds that:
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three quarters of the PRSPs recognize that malnutrition is a development problem that leads to loss of human capital and/or productivity
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a majority of PRSPs include strategies and specific actions to mitigate the effects of malnutrition
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many PRSPs, either explicitly or implicitly, include country nutrition profiles in their poverty analysis
However, there appears to be little prioritisation or sequencing. More importantly, the strategies and actions included in PRSPs often do not reflect an appropriate response to the nature of the nutrition problem in the country. Moreover, institutional capacity and budget allocations are not sufficient. This leads to a lack of impact of PRSPs on nutrition and will further contribute to the marginalisation of nutrition in future PRSPs.
