Nicholas D. Kristof
(Copyright: Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)
Nick Kristof writes compellingly in the NY Times that children suffering from malnutrition "don't cry. They don't smile. They don't move. They don't show a flicker of pain or interest." In his insightful piece, Nick has drawn some of the same conclusions that we have drawn here at WFP -- that it is critical to provide sound nutrition as we reach hungry people around the world.
ROME -- As we look to provide food for hungry people worldwide, we at WFP are looking increasingly at the sort of food we provide. We are improving cereals. We are partnering with companies who are helping us to fortify flour we provide for bread world wide. We are looking for ways to make the maximum nutritional impact for the 105 million people we help.
For those of you who follow Nick, you know his columns resonate because he gets out into the field to meet the people he is talking about. He's looked at interventions in health, education, capacity building. He's concluded -- as we have -- that nutrition is one of the most cost effective means of making a difference among the bottom billion. I called Nick to probe his views a little further.
I'll let him speak for himself:
NR: Just how important is access to good nutrition for the growth, well-being and future of children in the developing world?
Kristof: It’s hugely important, and it’s not just important for this week or this year but also for the rest of their lives, especially if they’re children and they’re severely malnourished. Then they may end up stunted physically for life and also impaired cognitively. That’s one of the things that scares me about the present economic crisis -- the idea that in 50 years we’ll still see people who are impaired because in 2009 they didn’t get adequate nutrition.
NR: On your trip did you see this first hand? Did you witness any kids that were stunted?
Kristof: We certainly saw kids who were stunted. It’s hard to figure out who is malnourished because of subprime mortgages in US and who is stunted because the family had a bad harvest or because dad spends the family money on banana beer. But you do get a sense that existing problems with nutrition have been exacerbated by the global crisis and that it’ll probably get worse because of remittances -- that’s still going to ripple through system.
NR: Where would you rank access to good nutrition in terms of the range of interventions that humanitarian agencies can deploy to make a real difference to people’s lives in developing countries?
Kristof: It’s hard to rank oxygen versus water. There are a number of things that are crucial. But I will say that micronutrients in particular seem to me enormously cost effective and I think they’re also significant because the failure to provide them does play out for many decades to come. And I think in whole debate about effectiveness of foreign aid, some kinds have a better record than others and this is one, along with some health and education interventions, that have a pretty good record of moving effectively from decision making to actual implementation at the grass roots
NR: What’s your sense of where the donor community stands on this right now?
Kristof: I think that the big problem is that these issues aren’t glamorous and they’re hard to slice and dice. The revolution in the way malaria went from being ignored to being something that university students got excited about came in part because of bed nets. Donors could buy something very tangible that could be delivered and it felt like it was making difference to a family somewhere. And I don’t think the humanitarian community has figured out as effectively how to slice and dice nutrition, to give people credit. A donor can build a school and put plaque on the school but you can’t put up a plaque on a community (to say these kids are two inches taller). But there should be ways of addressing that and I think if there were better ways of providing credit that would help.
Universities have been geniuses at selling the same space to donors ten times over, naming rights for a building, a room, a corridor, with plaques all over. I think the human community needs to figure out how to be as ingenious in giving credit, naming rights, a sense of tangible difference. And I think with all these things, this could get farther.
While these are incredibly unglamorous, one can almost turn that into a strength…I mean appeal to the wonks and nerds of the world that this may not be glamorous but is the most cost effective intervention around.
NR: One thing we’ve found compelling is to focus on one of the cups of food we give to kids in school – they cost 25 US cents. Then if someone donates $100 you’ve fed 400 children. That gives credit…
Kristof: There should be a way with the school feeding for example to have people adopt schools and somehow tie a donor by name with a particular school…
NR. It’s a bit of a bureaucratic nightmare…
Kristof: I’d have thought that also WFP and other folks could benefit from the interest in gender and wanting to help girls. With the take home rations for girls in some countries there should be some way of having those people who want to just target girls have them do that. Their donations pay for take home rations.
NR: You’ve seen WFP school feeding programmes when you’ve been out and about. What was your impression? Do you remember things you saw?
Kristof: I have heard criticism that they’re not the most cost effective way of improving nutrition in an area because parents sometimes then scrimp on feeding the children so that they eat in school. I don’t have any basis for evaluating that. But what I am clear about is that they make a huge difference in school attendance. And in those countries where there’s an extra ration for girls an enormous difference in getting girls to school. And in general I think educating girls is one most powerful ways to transform a community or country and so ultimately I think school feeding programmes resonate in that way.
I’m also shaped by having spent much of my career in east Asia. I always wondered why East Asia has been so successful. And I think a lot of that has to do with human capital generally and bringing girls into the formal economy. Both of those follow from education in general and education for girls in particular.
NR: You’ve undertaken your latest journey to Africa in the company of a young man who won a competition to join you on a reporting assignment. Just tell me a bit about that. How did you conceive of that?
Kristof: Originally I was trying to figure out a way of drumming up more interest in Darfur and I thought ‘Oh I’ll hold a competition and take a student with me to Darfur’. And, well, NYT lawyers heard about that and…you know…student? warzone? So I reconceived it as taking a student to a developing country. The advantages are first that the contest itself, through the applications, tends to generate some interest in development issues. Second, taking a student gives me an opportunity to step back and look at issues that are a problem every day, even if they’re not newsy because then I’m explaining it to the student. And third, the student does blogs and produces videos that I think have more appeal to other people than anything I do. There’s a novelty for students to look at how another student encounters these issues.
NR: What’s next?
Kristof: I have a book coming out with my wife in the fall about women and development. It’s called Half The Sky: turning oppression into opportunity for women worldwide.
NR: Thanks very much
Director of Communications, Public Policy, Communications and Private Partnerships
Nancy E. Roman became Director of Public Policy, Communications and Private Partnerships of the UN World Food Programme in August 2007. Ms Roman supervises a global staff covering operations in 80 countries.
