Annotation This book defines the nature and extent of the malnutrition problem in Bolivia, its causes, and its occurrence relative to wealth, location, and ethnicity. It also identifies the underlying reasons for the failed response.

Annotation This book defines the nature and extent of the malnutrition problem in Bolivia, its causes, and its occurrence relative to wealth, location, and ethnicity. It also identifies the underlying reasons for the failed response.

At the start of each decade the World Development Report focuses on poverty reduction. The World Development Report, now in its twenty-third edition, proposes an empowerment-security-opportunity framework of action to reduce poverty in the first decades of the twenty-first century. It views poverty as a multidimensional phenonmenon arising out of complex interactions between assets, markets, and institutions. This Report shows how the experience of poverty reduction in the last fifteen years has been remarkably diverse and how this experience has provided useful lessons as well as warnings against simplistic universal policies and interventions. It shows how current global trends present extraordinary opportunities for poverty reduction but also cause extraordinary risks, including growing inequality, marginalization, and social explosions. The World Development Report 2000/2001 explores the challenge of managing these risks in order to make the most of the opportunities for poverty reduction.

Bolivia's challenges with regard to policy are multiple, deep and multifaceted, and as such they require integral proposals. The book tries to cover these challenges in their different dimensions and presents options to grow more and better - creating jobs, with benefits for all, and without corruption and with civic participation. The design and implementation of all these options, simultaneously or in the short- and medium-term, is not feasible; and from here blooms options.

Malnutrition is crippling Bolivia, and the country must now face the political, and bureaucratic failure in addressing malnutrition. This study defines the nature, and extent of the malnutrition problem in the country, identifies the underlying reasons for the failed response, and outlines actions for both immediate, and more long-term results. The study further estimates that less than ten percent of government, and non-government expenditures, with an explicit nutrition, or food security component, is devoted to effective programs serving the neediest - poor pregnant women, and malnourished children under two. Public and private expenditures on nutrition are often misdirected, for although Bolivia did achieve successes in the advancement of nutrition over the past twenty years, the problem of malnutrition still requires action on several fronts. Primarily, nutrition needs a national strategy, and functional leadership, able to provide the population with accurate, and practical nutritional knowledge, prioritizing effective interventions for the most vulnerable. The study suggests improvements in program design, by targeting assistance, and exploiting the opportunities to improve nutrition through water and sanitation, rural development, roads, and education projects, which can have a profound effect on nutrition. Recommendations include the development of nutrition education focused on high-priority population, towards creating a private commission to demand continuity of Government attention to nutrition, as well as community participation in nutrition programming.

New evidence this year corroborates the rise in world hunger observed in this report last year, sending a warning that more action is needed if we aspire to end world hunger and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030. Updated estimates show the number of people who suffer from hunger has been growing over the past three years, returning to prevailing levels from almost a decade ago. Although progress continues to be made in reducing child stunting, over 22 percent of children under five years of age are still affected. Other forms of malnutrition are also growing: adult obesity continues to increase in countries irrespective of their income levels, and many countries are coping with multiple forms of malnutrition at the same time – overweight and obesity, as well as anaemia in women, and child stunting and wasting.