2005 INNOCENTI DECLARATION ON INFANT AND YOUNG CHILD FEEDING
Fifteen years after the 1990 Innocenti Declaration, remarkable progress has been made in improving infant and young child feeding practices worldwide.
However, lack of breastfeeding, poor breastfeeding and inadequate complementary feeding remain the greatest threat to child health and survival globally. Improved breastfeeding alone could save more than 3500 children’s lives every day, more than any other intervention.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child and other human rights instruments place an obligation on all parties to enable mothers, families and other caregivers to make informed decisions about optimal infant and young child feeding – exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months, and introduction of appropriate complementary feeding while continuing breastfeeding for 2 years or longer. Such an environment would provide the skilled practical and emotional support needed to enable mothers achieve the highest attainable standard of health and development for their infants and young children.
The challenges presented by the HIV epidemic, natural and human made emergencies, poverty, economic globalization, environmental contamination, health systems focussed on disease rather than health, gender inequities and women’s increasing employment outside the home, including in the non-formal sector, must be addressed if our vision is to become a reality for all children and for the achievement of the Millennium Declaration and related goals.
The targets of the Innocenti Declaration and the Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding remain the foundation for action. While significant progress has been achieved, much more needs to be done.
We therefore issue this CALL FOR ACTION:
All parties to:
- Urgently act on the Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding targets
- Support breastfeeding as the norm for infant and young child feeding
- Ensure attention to women’s health and nutrition throughout the life cycle
- Empower women in their own right, and in their roles related to infant and young child feeding
- Publicize the risks of artificial feeding
- Ensure immediate protection of breastfeeding in emergencies and avoid general distribution of breastmilk substitutes, and
- Implement the HIV and Infant Feeding - Framework for Priority Action.
All governments to:
- Identify and budget sufficient resources to allow full implementation of the activities called for in the Innocenti Declaration targets and the additional targets of the Global Strategy
- Strengthen national infant and young child feeding and breastfeeding coordinating committees, authorities and oversight groups, and ensure that they are technically sound, free from commercial influence and from any other conflict of interest.
- Revitalize the baby-friendly hospital initiative. maintaining the Global Criteria as the minimum requirement for all facilities, and expanding it to include maternity and pediatric practices and strengthen the community component
Implement all provisions of the International Code and subsequent relevant World Health Assembly Resolutions in their entirety as a minimum requirement, and establish sustainable enforcement mechanisms to prevent and/or address noncompliance - Adopt maternity protection legislation and other measures that facilitates 6 months of exclusive breastfeeding for women employed in all sectors, with urgent attention to the non-formal work sector
- Ensure that all health care staff, in both pre-service and in-service settings, are trained to implement infant and young child feeding policies, and are trained to a high standard of lactation management and other skills necessary to support mothers to succeed in six months of exclusive breastfeeding and continued breastfeeding with complementary feeding
- Ensure that all mothers are aware of their rights and have access to support, information and counseling in breastfeeding and complementary feeding from health workers and peer groups.
- Establish mechanisms to monitor infant and young child feeding patterns and trends, free of conflict of interest, to inform advocacy and programming
- Encourage media to provide positive images of optimal infant and young child feeding, to support breastfeeding as the normal form of infant and young child feeding, and strengthen social mobilization including World Breastfeeding Week.
All manufacturers and distributors of products within the scope of the International Code to:
- Ensure full compliance with all provisions of the Code and subsequent relevant WHA resolutions in all countries, independent of other measures to implement the Code and
- Ensure that all processed foods for infants and young children meet applicable standards of Codex Alimentarius.
Multilateral and bilateral organizations and international financial institutions to:
- Recognize that optimal breastfeeding and complementary feeding are essential to achieving the aims of the Millennium Development Goals, and other development initiatives, and the long term physical, intellectual and emotional health of all populations.
- To maintain viable health and nutrition units in UN and other agencies and ensure their full functionality in support of IYCF by explicitly including these topics in their job descriptions, providing the necessary political support within organizations and by ensuring their technical capacity and funding.
- Ensure that funding dedicated to poverty reduction strategies includes resources for breastfeeding and complementary feeding
- Assist governments in infant and young child feeding policy and programme assessment, implementation, monitoring and evaluation
- Increase technical guidance and support for capacity building
- Support operational research to address gaps and inform programming.
Public interest nongovernmental organizations to:
- Strengthen and give greater priority in their work for the protection, promotion and support of optimal infant feeding, and to increase cooperation and mutual support
- Monitor and bring violations of the Code to the attention of appropriate authorities so that violations will be addressed in accordance with national laws and regulations.
Women to:
- Be active parties in achieving solutions to the challenges they face and be aware of their rights; and to serve as resources for promotion, protection and support of optimal infant and young child feeding.
We who are assembled in Florence, Italy, on the twenty-second day of November 2005 to celebrate the 15th Anniversary of the Innocenti Declaration on the Protection, Promotion and Support of Breastfeeding declare that these actions are urgent and necessary to ensure the best start in life for our children, for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, and for the realization of the human rights of this and future generations.
The Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding
Operational Targets
Four operational targets from the 1990 Innocenti Declaration:
- Appoint a national breastfeeding coordinator with appropriate authority, and establish a multisectoral national breastfeeding committee composed of representatives from relevant government departments, nongovernmental organizations, and health professional associations
- Ensure that every facility providing maternity services fully practices all the "Ten steps to successful breastfeeding" set out in the WHO/UNICEF statement on breastfeeding and maternity services
- Give effect to the principles and aim of the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes and subsequent relevant Health Assembly resolutions in their entirety
- Enact imaginative legislation protecting the breastfeeding rights of working women and establish means for its enforcement
Five additional operational targets:
- Develop, implement, monitor and evaluate a comprehensive policy on infant and young child feeding, in the context of national policies and programmes for nutrition, child and reproductive health, and poverty reduction
- Ensure that the health and other relevant sectors protect, promote and support exclusive breastfeeding for six months and continued breastfeeding up to two years of age or beyond, while providing women access to the support they require - in the family, community and workplace - to achieve this goal
- Promote timely, adequate, safe and appropriate complementary feeding with continued breastfeeding
- Provide guidance on feeding infants and young children in exceptionally difficult circumstances, and on the related support required by mothers, families and other caregivers
- Consider what new legislation or other suitable measures may be required, as part of a comprehensive policy on infant and young child feeding, to give effect to the principles and aim of the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes and to subsequent relevant Health Assembly resolutions.