The fight against hunger and poverty has been intensified over the last two decades, with reaffirmation of commitments by the international community. The challenges of developed and under development countries, however, are still significant. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, currently about 800 million people remain chronically undernourished and more than 2 billion suffer from nutritional deficiencies, including 159 million children under 5 years old. On the other hand, overweight and obesity are increasing in most countries, affecting 1.9 billion people.

In view of this need to gather international efforts against hunger, poor nutrition and poverty, in 2013 the initiative Nutrition for Growth (N4G) was launched, resulting in a political engagement process started at the London Olympics in 2012 and today also involving the Brazil and Japan governments, since Japan is the next to host the Olympics in 2020.

As part of the strategy, an international cooperation aimed to sovereignty, nutrition and food security was created: Global Network of Institutions of Learning, Research and Extension on Nutrition, Food and Nutritional Sovereignty and Security – NutriSSAN. The purpose is to disseminate knowledge about these issues and develop public policies in different regions and continents.

The NutriSSAN network is opened to any institution committed to fight against hunger and malnutrition and aligned with the Human Right to Food and Nutrition (HRFN), serving nutrition more broadly, also including the essential conditions for the individual's power, such as adequate access to water and land.

During an event held in April, at Manaus, Brazilian institutions signed a letter for creation of NutriSSAN network. The letter defined that the Brazilian National Research and Educational Network (RNP) is responsible for technological and operational support to network platform, which was based on the government of Telemedicine University Network (Rute). As of this experience, one of the actions expected is the creation of Special Interest Groups (SIG) for the NutriSSAN network, in order to exchange knowledge between institutions, through web-conferencing meetings.

One of the institutions involved in Food and Nutrition Security is the Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp, in Portuguese), which participates in the Defense and Promotion Network of Healthy, Proper and Solidarity Eating (Redesans), nationwide, and network sovereignty and food security and nutrition of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur).

According to Maria Rita Marques de Oliveira, Unesp’s researcher, for the academic community, is of particular interest the articulation between education, research and extension focused on sovereignty, food security and human right to food. “The issue is wide and varied, discussing about all the processes involved in the food chain”, she explains.

NutriSSAN, for Oliveira, has the purpose to contribute with knowledge and technologies capable of solving or reducing matters raised in the Food Security and Nutrition scenario, which deals with the right to regular and permanent access to quality food and in sufficient quantity, based on adequate and healthy food practices that respect social, economic and cultural contexts.