Nutrition & Child Development Consultant

Lebanon is experiencing a growing triple burden of malnutrition (stunting, micronutrient deficiencies, and obesity) among children and adolescents and high rates of undernutrition among women. Despite this unprecedented progress, the burden of poor child nutrition and development is increasing in Lebanon due to the protracted refugee and economic crisis. Children under five years of age in the most deprived areas are not growing and developing well because of poor care, malnutrition – undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies and overweight – and three in four children are living in food poverty, without the minimum diet they need to grow healthy. This’s wile 30 to 40 per cent of school age children and adolescents (specially girls), are affected by obesity and or anemia.
One of the main drivers of this is extremely poor dietary patterns of children and adolescents; 70% of children are deprived of the best start in life (Exclusive breast-feeding) and 3 in 4 children under age 5 experienced child food poverty, which means their diets included only four food groups at most. Even more alarmingly, over 1 in 4 children under age 5 live in severe food poverty, meaning, the diets of 85,000 Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian refugees’ children, include at most two food groups, a few spoonsful of porridge and a small cup of milk may be their only meal of the day, every day, leaving them highly vulnerable to severe stunting and wasting – the most life-threatening forms of undernutrition in early childhood.
Guided by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UNICEF Nutrition Strategy 2020-2030 and the national nutrition startgey in Lebanon, UNICEF Lebanon Country Programme aims to prevent maternal and child malnutrition in all its forms across the life cycle and ensure the early detection and treatment of children suffering from life-threatening malnutrition. Our Strategy calls for a systems approach to improving maternal and child nutrition by supporting the delivery of nutrition-specific actions through five key systems: the food system and the health, water and sanitation, education, and social protection systems.
The Nutrition consultant provides professional technical, operational, and administrative support to implementation of the projects related to maternal nutrition, nutrition of school age children and adolescents through multiple systems (Health, Food Systems, Education and Social Protection).