Speech
Samdech Akka Moha Sena Padei Techo Hun Sen at the Opening of the
4th National Seminar on Food Security and Nutrition in Cambodia, under
the theme of “Improving Child and Maternal Nutrition”
21 May 2012
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Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear Students and All the Participants!
Dear Students and All the Participants!
Today, I’m extremely
pleased to attend the Opening of the 4th National Seminar on Food
Security and Nutrition, under the theme of “Improving Child and
Maternal Nutrition”. This seminar indeed will make Cambodian people
understand and know more about the challenges that are the common
concerns of Cambodia, development partners, and relevant Non-Government
Organizations (NGOs), and it is our opportunity to work together to
figure out appropriate and effective solutions for those challenges.
Indeed, any solution that is related to Food Security and Nutrition not
only responds to the policy priorities of the Royal Government, but also
contributes to reducing poverty incidence among the people, lessening
people’s hardship, promoting the living standards and welfare of the
people. This reaffirms the important contribution of the Council for
Agricultural and Rural Development has made to social development,
poverty reduction and mankind-value promotion; all these achievement are
priceless.
Taking this opportunity, I
would like to praise and highly value the Council of Agricultural and
Rural Development as well as relevant ministries, national institutions,
development partners and Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) that have
collaborated well in the preparation of this important seminar.
Along with this, on behalf of
the Royal Government of Cambodia, I would like to thank development
partners and Non-Government Organizations (NGOs), including the United
State Agency for International Development (USAID), the United Nations
Children's Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Program Organizations (WFP),
World Health Organizations (WHO), CARITAS Cambodia Organization
(CARITAS) for taking part with the Royal Government in the
rehabilitation, construction and development of many areas in Cambodia
through providing cooperation credits and all kinds of assistances,
including material, financial and technical support.
Through this, I believe that
the Council for Agricultural and Rural Development, a leading national
institution in food security and nutrition, will continue its role, as
the key secretary of the Royal Government, to address challenges to
provide advantages for the nation and the people, as well as to promote
the value of the mankind and contribute the poverty reduction of our
people. In this spirit, I would like once again appeal to the people and
the public from all walks of life, local authorities, development
partners, and Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) to continue taking
part more actively and robustly in the cooperation with the Council for
Agricultural and Rural Development in order to make our new theme for
this year, “Child and Maternal Nutrition”, materialize and to address
other challenges related to food security and nutrition in Cambodia.
Before us, I would like to re-emphasize that food security and nutrition
is recognized and regarded as the fundamental right for each individual
under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights that Cambodia has
ratified. Acknowledging the importance of food security and nutrition,
the Royal Government has been paying great attention on, especially on
the reform of food security and nutrition, and has regarded it as a
priority issue by incorporating it into the National Strategic
Development Plan. Indeed, under the Cambodia’s Millennium Development Goals, food security and nutrition is the highlighted in the 1st goal: “Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger”, in the 4th goal: “Reduce child mortality, and in the 5th goal: “Improve maternal health”. Besides
that, in the National Strategic Development Plan (NSDP) Cambodia has
set an objective to improve health, nutrition, and education of the poor
in rural areas and the vulnerable, and enhance the living standards and
general food security by increasing agricultural development activities
and rural development. In addition, we have constantly adhered to and
implemented the ideology of “no one die of starvation or ignorance”.
In this regard, the Royal
Government has been imposing new systematic and intertwining measures to
effectively minimize negative impacts by working hard to ensure food
security, nutrition, macroeconomic stability, and robustness of our
national social safety nets. In general, we clearly understand that food
security does not mean that we should produce sufficient food, but have
to ensure sufficient income to buy food, good health and good hygiene
and sanitation. Therefore, in order to ensure food security, we should
not think of producing food and income generation to purchase food, but
food preparation, cooking, health care, hygiene and sanitation as Khmer
proverb states “eating with hygiene, drinking clean water, and sleeping
in safety nets.” This indicates that improving food security and
nutrition, which is cross cutting issues, needs the close and effective
cooperation and jointed efforts among related ministries/organizations,
private sector, development partners and non-government organizations.
Taking this opportunity, I
would like to encourage the Council for Agricultural and Rural
Development to continue implementing its tasks and responsibilities
through continuously paying highly special attention on its main areas:
(1) strengthening coordination and partnership; (2) implementing
policies, strategies and programs; (3) improving information and
knowledge management; and (3) monitoring, controlling and evaluating
activities and progresses.
I have noticed that the
Council for Agricultural and Rural Development has closely cooperated
with relevant ministries/organizations, development partners and
non-government organization to jointly formulate food security and
nutrition as we have witnessed. Indeed, this achievement has given
countless benefit to society and economy, including good health and
well-educated quality labors, which are highly potential for
development. Other social benefit includes promoting gender quality,
reducing migration from rural to urban or illegal immigration to oversea
and improving environmental sustainability and better living standard
of youths.
In contrast, if mother and
child are facing the risk of malnutrition, social and economic lose will
arise from impacting not only child health and mortality, but also the
cognitive development of children, their educational outcome and
therefore the future productivity and wealth of a country.
Although there is a change of
weather condition, causing frequent drought and flood over the last few
years, we are able to increase food crop production, in particular rice
thanks to improvement of irrigation system and agricultural technique.
Through this, we can confidently confirm that Cambodia certainly
maintain its food security. Evidently, in term of rice production in
2011, we achieved 8.77 million tons of paddy rice that, as a result, can be translated into a surplus of 2.78 million tons of milled rice, equivalent to 4.34 million tons of paddy rice.
Even so, we have still facing
malnutrition issue, although poverty reduction has been significantly
made from 47% in 1994 to 25% now. For instance, the rate of wasted
children under 5 years increased from 8.4% in 2005 to 8.9% in 2008 and
to 10.9% in 2010. However, chronic malnutrition in children under 5
years still declined between 2005 and 2008 from 43.2% to 39.5%.
Therefore, we can evaluate that child and material under nutrition do
not correlate to poverty status, but relate to other factors such as
availability and access to balanced and micronutrient rich food as well
as to safe water, good hygiene and sanitation.
Overall, Cambodia clearly
understand the significant importance of child and maternal nutrition in
developing human resource, increasing labor productivity and ensuring
potential growth of child, who is considered as son being replaced his
father in the future. At the same time, we recognize that child and
maternal nutrition does not only relate to health sector, but also to
many institutions that require to joint efforts of all related
organization.
Based on this view and the
objective of contributing to what we have already implemented in
response to my previous recommendations and in order to continuously
promote the effective implementation of food safety and nutrition policy
to better enhance child and maternal nutrition, I would like to take
this opportunity to provide more recommendations as follows:
First. All relevant
stakeholders must act together and in parallel in related sectors,
including agriculture, health, clean water and sanitation, and must
formulate the policy on mixing micronutrients with food and prepare
necessary regulations regarding food and social protection. Generally,
the mixing of micronutrients such as iodine, ferrous, and vitamin A with
the basic food is a low-cost alternative with high efficiency in
promoting nutrition. Therefore, in order to increase input, I would like
to ask the workshop to discuss and seek solution for expanding the
existing intervention as such providing additional micro-substance to
children, treating chronic under-nutrition, feeding the babies and
children in appropriate way, in particular for the first 1000 days of
children life.
Second.
All national and sub-national stakeholders must make joint effort to
implement nutrition-related programs that are carried out in local
community. And, we must consider improving clean water infrastructure,
way of life and proper food preparation practice, health care and
community sanitation.
Third. Council for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) must further effort and work more actively in role as coordinator for food security and nutrition
work. These works will help ensure each individual family having enough
nourishment-rich food. Moreover, we need to promote community-based and
family-based food production such as gardening vegetable, raising
animal and farming fish which is necessary to address women and children
nutrition issues.
Fourth. Council
for Agricultural and Rural Development must continue training planner
and decision maker at both national and sub-national level on food
security and nutrition in order to build capacity and raise work
efficiency.
Fifth. With discussion among all stakeholders, Council for Agricultural and Rural Development must develop strategy for food security and nutrition
that is comprehensive in-depth and applicable. At same time, we must
expand existing programs and continuously create new programs which are
to be implemented directly in community through sub- national
administrative mechanism. These vital tasks will contribute to
establishing of social safety net, improving poor family capacity and
increasing family income.
To implement these spirits, I
would like to request all relevant ministries and institutions to
strengthen close cooperation, especially cooperation with development
partners, private sector and other stakeholders to truly achieve these
goals. I strongly believe that the workshop will accept these
recommendations as foundation for discussion, for fulfilling their roles
and duties in line with the direction set for the social benefit.
Once again, I would like to
admire and highly appreciate the management and all officials of Council
for Agricultural and Rural Development for making effort actively with
high sense of responsibility in promotion of food security and nutrition
in Cambodia. Furthermore, I would like to appeal ministries,
institutions, sub-national administration, development partners and
agencies, national and international organizations, private sector,
stakeholders and communities continue to take part in any form to
bolster the provision of nutrition to mother and children.
Before ending, I would like to
take this opportunity to thank development partners and NGOs who have
been providing good cooperation and technical and financial supports to
Council for Agricultural and Rural Development to implement its
programmes and projects.
At the end, together with the official inauguration of the 4th National Workshop on Food Security and Nutrition under the theme “Nutrition for Mother and Children”
now, I would like to wish Your Excellencies Ambassadors,
representatives of national and international organizations,
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, and students the four gems of
Buddhist blessings: Longevity, Nobility, Health and Strength.
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