The Breastfeeding Advocacy Toolkit (the Toolkit) is intended to ensure stakeholders are able to easily access and use advocacy tools aimed at improving policies and financing for the protection, promotion, and support of breastfeeding.
The Toolkit is an initiative of the Global Breastfeeding Collective (the Collective). Led by UNICEF and WHO, the Collective is a partnership of over 20 international organizations with the goal of increasing investment and policy change to support breastfeeding worldwide, which requires advocacy at the global, national, and sub-national levels.
The Collective’s vision is a world in which all mothers have the technical, financial, emotional, and public support they need to start breastfeeding within an hour of a child’s birth, to breastfeed exclusively for six months, and to continue breastfeeding, with complementary foods, for two years or beyond. The Collective’s mission is to rally political, legal, financial, and public support, so rates of breastfeeding increase, which will benefit mothers, children, and society.
The Toolkit will provide a central platform for tools and resources for breastfeeding advocates and other stakeholders specific to the Collective’s seven policy actions:
1. Increase funding to raise the rate of breastfeeding from birth to 2 years
2. Adopt and monitor the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes
3. Enact paid family leave and workplace breastfeeding policies
4. Implement the ‘Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding’
5. Improve access to skilled breastfeeding counselling in health facilities
6. Strengthen links between health facilities and communities to support breastfeeding
7. Monitor the progress of policies, programs, and funding for breastfeeding