Unravelling Commitment? An Empirical Assessment of Political Commitment to Reduce Hunger and Undernutrition in Five High Burden Countries

In recent years, the global hunger and nutrition community has increasingly come to view political commitment as an essential ingredient for pushing food and nutrition security higher up public policy agendas.This study accordingly builds on research that has used secondary data to demonstrate that developing countries often have divergent strengths of commitment to hunger reduction and to nutrition. We review the literature to synthesise a set of nine political commitment indicators; construct a survey instrument; and collect primary data in five high burden countries (Bangladesh, Malawi, Nepal, Tanzania and Zambia) to ascertain whether government commitment to hunger is the same as commitment to nutrition.