Nutrition-Sensitive Social Protection

Social protection is a key strategy to tackle malnutrition, as poverty is a root cause of food insecurity and malnutrition (FAO, 2015). In Bangladesh, while child stunting prevalence has halved since the mid-1990s to the present time, around a third of young children are still affected (BDHS, 2017-2018) – a level that is among the highest in the world. In urban areas, 26 percent of children under five are moderately and severely stunted, and the prevalence in slums is almost twice that in non-slum areas (UNICEF, 2016). In 2015, the GoB adopted the National Social Security Strategy (NSSS), which incorporates a life-cycle approach to reform the social protection system.