N4G Summit Governance

The 2021 Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit, December 7-8, will be hosted under the auspices of the Government of Japan. Since September 2019, a consultative process has been underway to identify key areas for action that can guide the mobilization of commitments within universal health coverage, food systems, fragile and conflict affected settings, financing, and accountability. The working groups that led this process have provided the framework for SMART commitments to inform mobilization, presented in the N4G Commitment-making Guide.

N4G Summit Principles of Engagement 

The N4G Summit Principles of Engagement are for all stakeholders to abide by to ensure a credible and transparent process, free of conflicts of interest, that will deliver strong and consensus-driven commitments at the N4G Summit. These Principles of Engagement were developed over several months of consultations with input from governments, international organizations, civil society, and business. and reflecting the SUN Principles of Engagement. while The Principles will be applied at the Summit to mobilize stakeholders and identify solutions and commitments to meeting the Summit goals based on a shared vision, ambition, and identification of common ground. To ensure that the Summit delivers credible, sustainable, and well-supported outcomes for nutrition via public and private sector action, stakeholder consultations and participation at the Summit are based on this set of agreed principles:

  1. The process of developing commitments must engage a wide range of actors in open and transparent consultation
  2. All stakeholders’ commitments need to be SMART and significant
  3. Public policy must be evidence-based, established by governments through inclusive participatory processes
  4. Breast milk substitute (BMS) manufacturers need to commit to an action plan to achieve full compliance with the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes (the Code) by 2030, both in policy and practice.
  5. Excluded companies or industries cannot represent their business associations at the Summit

The Summit’s Principles of Engagement are available in full here (French/Spanish) 

N4G Advisory Group

The Government of Japan assembled the N4G Advisory group, a multi-stakeholder platform to support the coordination of Summit logistics, engagement, and mobilization of commitments across constituencies. The Terms of Reference for the N4G Advisory Group can be found here.

N4G Virtual Secretariat

A small but committed Virtual Secretariat (VS) has convened to support the Government of Japan on key aspects of the organization of the event and to ensure its intended outcomes. The VS will be overseen by the Government of Japan and will involve close collaboration with leads from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office of the UK Government, Nutrition International, UNICEF, World Bank, the Global Nutrition Report, and other partner organizations as necessary. The Terms of Reference for the VS can be found here.

N4G Outreach Group

The N4G Outreach group focuses on coordinating mobilization of commitments from partner governments via in-country UN offices, feeding in advice on invitees and speakers for the Summit, and overseeing the process of reviewing/registering commitments as part of the agreed N4G accountability framework. This work will feed this into the virtual Secretariat that has been set up to provide support to the Government of Japan on key aspects of the preparation of the event. The Terms of Reference for the Outreach Group can be found here.