ROME, Nov. 19 (Xinhua) -- The second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2) kicked off on Wednesday, with representatives from 190 countries gathered at the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) headquarters in Rome to address the multiple challenges of global malnutrition in the 21st century.
"Over the past decades, we have made progresses. However, malnutrition still claims the lives of millions of people and robs millions more of a dignified life," FAO Director General Jose Graziano da Silva said at the opening of the three-day summit organized in conjunction with the World Health Organization (WHO).
Da Silva said that while the number of undernourished people has fallen by 210 million in two decades, some 805 million people remain chronically hungry.
The same trend could be registered among minors, he said, pointing out that 160 million children have stunted growth even though that number has fallen from 40 to 25 percent.
Additionally, two billion people suffer from deficiencies in micronutrients such as iron, zinc, or vitamin A, which results in a condition defined by experts as "hidden hunger."
The conference discussion centered around the close connection between food security, coordinated sustainable policies, and human health.
"Our societies are interconnected as never before, so that the consequences of a bad policy adopted in one country can often reverberate around the world," WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said.
"Environmental policies must also be part of the discussion during the summit, (because) our planet is losing its capacity to sustain human life in good health," Chan declared.
The Rome Declaration on Nutrition reaffirmed a commitment to eradicate hunger and prevent malnutrition with a special focus on under-nutrition in children, and anaemia in women and minors. It also set a goal to reverse the obesity trend, which affects some 42 million children and 500 million adults in developed countries, according to FAO.
Suggested guidelines for achieving these goals are investing more in sustainable food systems, and pro-poor and smallholder agriculture.
Education, social protection policies, and health systems capable to address specific conditions linked to a shortage of food and water could also play a crucial role in improving the situation, the declaration added.
But the FAO warned that only a "joint and coordinated effort" would achieve these goals.
"Governments must lead the way ... and their effort must involve different sectors, including health, agriculture, education and social protection," Da Silva said.
"We need parliamentarians to make the laws and set the budgets to support better nutrition. We need civil society organizations to ensure the voices of the hungry are heard. And we need the private sector onboard."
A nutrition declaration was adopted by the conference in order to reaffirm and update all commitments to the eradication of hunger that have been made since the first International Conference on Nutrition (ICN1) in 1992.