Right to food and nutrition 2016, para. 17
Paragraph- Paragraph text
- WHO recommends breastfeeding within one hour of birth and exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months of life. Nutritionally adequate and safe complementary foods should be introduced at 6 months of age, together with continued breastfeeding up to 2 years of age or beyond. Yet only about 36 per cent of infants between 0 and 6 months old are exclusively breastfed. In high-income countries, fewer than one in five infants are breastfed for 12 months, and only two out of three children between 6 months and 2 years of age receive breast milk in low- and middle-income countries. These rates have not improved in two decades. In addition, few children receive nutritionally adequate and safe complementary foods. A total of 823,000 children's lives could be saved yearly if all children between 0 and 23 months were optimally breastfed. One of the major obstacles to breastfeeding is the misleading marketing by baby food companies of breast milk substitutes and the lack of corporate accountability for the adverse consequences of such abuses.
- Legal status
- Non-negotiated soft law
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Means of adoption
- N.A.
- Topic(s)
- Food & Nutrition
- Health
- Person(s) affected
- Children
- Infants
- Year
- 2016
- Paragraph type
- Other
- Reference
- SR Food, Report to the UNGA (2016), A/71/282, para. 17.
- Paragraph number
- 17
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