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July Our news team reports. The Association's position on the United Nations System Standing Committee on Nutrition (SCN) is as stated in our two position papers published last December and in January, accessible as shown above. Here is how our first position paper begins:

'It is time for the United Nations System Standing Committee on Nutrition (the SCN) to be reshaped, fit for the times in which we live now. Discussions on its reform have been taking place for around five years, and a number of position papers, coming to various and sometimes opposing conclusions, have been prepared. It is now time to act. The Association's position is governed and guided by seven principles.

Principles

'Nature
The SCN should remain a United Nations body, controlled by the UN, and dedicated to the UN principles that uphold peace, justice, freedom and human rights. Proposals that it approximate to, or in effect become, a 'public-private partnership' are misguided and mistaken.

'Scope
The SCN should address nutrition, and food as this relates to nutrition, as a whole. It should not be confined solely or mainly, in principle or practice, to undernutrition and its prevention, control and relief. A substantial amount of its work should therefore be strategic.

'Scale
We are persuaded that the current staffing and costs of the SCN are about right, pending review. It should make rapidly increased use of electronic networking, notably for the benefit of less resourced members, and also of outsourcing to independent organisations.

'Functions
The SCN has two separate functions, harmonisation and deliberation. The harmonisation governing body is UN business, and all its members, without exception, should be very senior UN agency officials. The deliberative forum and its membership should be multi-actor.

'Membership
UN membership of the SCN should be at Assistant Director-General level. Non-UN membership of the deliberative forum is by personal invitation from the harmonisation governing body, and should be at equivalent senior executive level. Deputies are by permission.

'Representation
All those engaged with the SCN as members or observers need to be, and seen to be, representatives. One exception is independent scholars who are not representatives of any relevant professional entity. Personal views are acceptable when clearly identified as such.

'Conflicts of interest
Industry should engage with the SCN's deliberative forum. Non-conflicted industry representatives should be eligible to be members of the forum. A balanced number of representatives from industries with conflicted interests may be observers, by personal invitation'.

We also said in December that it is not time to degrade or abolish the SCN, or to abandon its name and its 'brand'. We said 'Demolition of the SCN would be unwise, short-sighted, and damaging. It would also send out a wrong message at a critical time. Redefined, clarified and reshaped, with new investment and commitment from the UN system of agencies, and also from UN member states, the SCN will be an essential resource. If it did not exist it would be necessary to invent it.

'Further, many knowledgeable, resourceful and influential people, working within governments, and civil society and professional organisations (of which the Association is one) and elsewhere, remain committed to the fundamental principles and purposes both of the UN and of the SCN, and to the cause of world nutrition. These people and their organisations also amount to a resource that the UN family needs, above all now'.

The principles above are applied to the nature of the SCN in our December position paper, and to its governance in our January position paper. At the time our position was widely welcomed, including among UN members of the governing body of the SCN. But this year, as already reported, energy has drained and subscriptions for 2011 from the most relevant UN agencies, which had been pledged, have not materialised. The only future for the SCN seems to be if anything, nominal only, with its skeleton secretariat incorporated into the SUN initiative, with different responsibilities. Given this it would be misleading to retain the name.

SUN is not a new improved SCN

The Scaling Up Nutrition initiative (SUN), while having 'nutrition' in its title, and while engaging the same UN agencies that once were committed to the SCN, has a different nature and scope. Rather than elaborate on these now, we will indeed give space to an account of SUN in a future issue in the near future. Meanwhile, there are features of the SCN, such as the ability to look strategically at world nutrition as a whole, that seem likely to disappear in favour of a more narrowly focused programme; in particular, the relief of 'classic' malnutrition, in support of the Millennium Development Goals, in which transnational food and drink manufacturers will be partners.

Many members of the Association have worked for the furtherance of the aims of the SCN, some for many years. We welcome comments and guidance.