Strategic Partnership With Parliament of Uganda: The Parliamentary Nutrition Week 2025

The Parliamentary Nutrition Week has grown into one of Uganda’s most prominent national platforms for advancing food and nutrition governance. What began in 2020 as a modest policy dialogue initiated by the Center for Food and Adequate Living Rights (CEFROHT) with a few progressive Members of Parliament has now become an annual, multi-sectoral, and high-level national event. Over the years, this platform has catalysed transformative engagements between Parliament, civil society, development partners, and local communities, deepening commitment to the right to adequate food and nutrition in Uganda.

At the heart of this success is a strong and strategic partnership between CEFROHT and the Uganda Parliamentary Alliance on Food and Nutrition Security (UPA-FNS), a cross-party coalition of legislators committed to driving legal, policy, and budgetary reforms to address hunger, malnutrition, and unhealthy food environments in Uganda.

The 2025 edition of Parliamentary Nutrition Week was hosted in Moroto District from 25th to 28th May, in the Karamoja subregion, one of Uganda’s most food-insecure and nutritionally vulnerable areas. The choice of venue was intentional: to shine a national spotlight on persistent malnutrition, climate-related food shocks, and systemic inequality affecting pastoralist and agro-pastoralist communities.

The Uganda Parliamentary Alliance on Food and Nutrition Security (UPA-FNS) has been a key driver behind the institutionalisation of Parliamentary Nutrition Week. CEFROHT works closely with the alliance to provide technical legal expertise in developing pro-nutrition legislation and regulatory frameworks, support parliamentary oversight on nutrition budget allocations and policy implementation, facilitate evidence-based advocacy that links community voices to legislative action, and promote a human rights-based approach to food systems reform.

The Alliance has become a rallying point within Parliament for legislators who are committed to nutrition equity and have pledged to push for structural and legal changes, especially on issues of food safety and access to nutritious food.

One of the flagship policy priorities at this year’s event was the adoption of a Nutrient Profiling Model (NPM) and Front-of-Pack (FOP) warning labelling policy. This policy package, championed jointly by CEFROHT and UPA-FNS, aims to categorise foods based on their nutritional composition, targeting products high in sugar, salt, trans fats, and other harmful additives; introduce warning labels on packaged and ultra-processed foods to help consumers make healthier choices; support the regulation of food marketing targeted at children; and complement existing health strategies to curb rising cases of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes, obesity, and hypertension.

Throughout the week, CEFROHT emphasised the need for a National Food and Nutrition Law, rooted in constitutional guarantees and aligned with Uganda’s commitments under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and the Right to Adequate Food Guidelines by the FAO.

What began as a simple dialogue in 2020 between CEFROHT and a small number of MPs has now evolved into a national movement for food and nutrition justice, thanks to strategic, sustained, and visionary partnerships.

Today, through its collaboration with the Uganda Parliamentary Alliance on Food and Nutrition Security, CEFROHT continues to shape national discourse and drive legal, policy, and institutional reforms aimed at realising the right to adequate food for all Ugandans, reducing the burden of malnutrition and NCDs, and building sustainable, resilient, and people-centred food systems.

The 2025 Parliamentary Nutrition Week reaffirmed that political will, legal frameworks, and community participation are the cornerstones of nutrition justice. As we move forward, CEFROHT remains committed to this partnership and to building a future where every Ugandan, regardless of geography or background, can live a healthy, nourished, and dignified life.