Japan is being asked to provide both human and technical assistance.

However, unfortunately, malnutrition is not yet properly understood or given high policy priority in Japan, and the scale and content of support is also insufficient. In the future, we will need many more people who have a proper understanding of nutritional issues and the skills and experience unique to Japan.

Japan is the world's fourth largest donor of bilateral ODA in the field of "basic nutrition." However, the reality is that 99% of funding is provided through multi-agency organizations (mainly the United Nations), and only 1% of support is provided through NGOs and the civil society sector. Nutrition support provided by NGOs has the advantage of being able to penetrate deeply into communities and achieve sustainable and cost-effective activities. Taking advantage of the strengths of each organization, they have been widely implementing support for locally rooted nutrition improvement in countries where nutritional conditions are particularly serious. However, the scale of their support is small, and they have not been able to expand from point to surface.

In addition, Japan has a track record of working on nutrition improvement, with a system of life improvement workers in the past. As can be seen from the efforts in the domestic system, such as school lunches, food education, and nutritionist training, there are a wealth of human resources with expertise in the field of nutrition in Japan, but the reality is that there are very few Japanese experts who provide technical support for nutrition improvement on the ground in developing countries.

Considering the gap between financial support and on-site assistance, we will need many people with a proper understanding of nutritional issues in developing countries and the experience and expertise that is unique to Japan. To achieve this, it is necessary to raise the correct understanding of malnutrition in developing countries and its policy priority within Japan .