Bhubaneswar: The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has inked an agreement on strengthening nutrition and food security in Odisha and contributing to achieving the Sustainable Development Goal 2, Zero Hunger, target by the state.
The agreement was signed between Bishow Parajuli, WFP’s Representative and Country Director to India, and Roopa Roshan Sahoo, Member Secretary, Poverty and Human Development Monitoring Agency (PHDMA).
“WFP has been working closely with the Government of Odisha and other stakeholders around the common vision of addressing malnutrition, improving food security and livelihood of small farmers, especially women. The three new partnerships build on this exceptional synergy by bringing in an added focus on monitoring impact, gender analysis, and research,” said Parajuli.
“This MOU will further push the synergy to work together in the field of research & development to address the food security issues in juxtaposed with achieving Sustainable Development Goal,” said Sahoo.
Under this Agreement, WFP and the Government of Odisha aim at furthering the objective of increasing evidence and knowledge base around food security and nutrition through:
(i) institutionalisation of food security and nutrition analysis within Government systems, (ii) evidence generation activities to fill critical evidence gap around food security and analysis, (iii) engaging stakeholders around data and evidence on SDG 2 monitoring and (iv) strengthening monitoring and evaluation capacity with Government outlays; thereby leading to a sustainable food system in the State.
