Discurso do Representante Permanente Alterno, Embaixador Norberto Moretti, no evento paralelo "Investimento no Futuro: Merendas Escolares pelo Desenvolvimento Sustentável" - 12 de julho de 2024 (texto em inglês)

Statement the Deputy Permanent Representative of Brazil to the United Nations, Ambassador Norberto Moretti, on the side-event “Investment in the Future: School Meals for Sustainable Development”
July 12th, 2024

Moderator: “Brazil has been championing this area for many years, providing policy and technical assistance to many countries around the world, and sharing the experience of your country, which provides meals to more than 22 million students every day. Can you tell us more about how Brazil will continue championing this agenda, especially in the context of the G20 Global Alliance against hunger and poverty and COP 30 in 2025?”

Dear moderator, thank you for the question. Good afternoon to everyone. It is a pleasure for Brazil to join forces with our co-chairs of the School Meals Coalition and the UN System in this event. I would also like to register our appreciation for the presence of the Deputy Secretary-General with us today.

I’m happy to provide our view on the issue.

Let me start by pointing out that the School Meals Coalition and the G20 Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty share a fundamental assumption: the world already counts with effective, affordable, shareable and adaptable solutions to tackle hunger and poverty.

What we need is to bridge those solutions with finance, knowledge, and partnerships to the benefit of the countries that wish to implement them. On that, the two initiatives are fully aligned.

This premise is a not a theory or hypothesis. Rather, it is based on extensive research on international cases, including in the preparation of the Alliance proposal, and in our own national experience. Let me touch upon what we can learn from that.

As you said, our National School Feeding Program reaches more than 20 million students – in fact, in 2022, it was closer to 40 million. These students are distributed on more than 140 thousand schools and 5 thousand municipalities. It has been proven to be a fundamental tool to avoid school evasion and contribute to children’s food security and nutrition, particularly in the poorest regions in the country.

However, we haven’t stopped there. The Program is also grounded on the Food Guidelines for the Brazilian Population, which prioritizes the implementation of healthy and adequate diets and the use of diversified and safe food, taking into consideration local culture, knowledge and habits.

It also demands that each school have a nutrition technician to ensure that the meals offered attend to the nutritional needs of children.

Finally, our public policy for school meals is also linked with rural development. It requires that at least 30% of the amount made available for procurement be sourced from small farmholders and that at least 50% of that value to be namely attributed to the women of the household.

If we correspond these measures with the 2030 Agenda, well-design school meals programmes can hit multiple SDGs at once, particularly Goals 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 13.

For all those reasons, school meals are a typical example of the policies that are being included in the Alliance’s basket. In fact, the Secretariat of the Coalition gave us fundamental support in that regard and other partners of the Coalition, such as the Rockefeller Foundation, are also very interested in contributing to the Alliance.

To put it in practical terms, when adhering to the Alliance, a partner country will be able to commit to part or all of that basket and, hence, receive assistance to meet its demands in terms of technical and financial support and partnership building. School meals are one of the tools available to the Alliance; and the Alliance will be a tool to amplify the coverage and efficiency of school meals programmes.

Dear colleagues,

School meals programs are not necessarily complex, expensive or hard to implement. On the contrary, they are a safe, effective and adaptable tool with a multiplier effect for the attainment of the SDGs and an investment both in the present and in the future, as it can lead to the formation of healthier and more educated generations.

Nevertheless, the data collected for the Global Alliance shows that they are still surprisingly and substantially underfunded. We count on your support to raise awareness, finance and knowledge to ensure that every student can have access to sufficient, healthy and nutritious food on schools.

I thank you.