Celebrating twenty years of progress: World Breastfeeding Week 2012.

This year we are supporting and participating in activities in celebration of the 20th World Breastfeeding Week. This annual event is celebrated during the first week in August to commemorate the signing of the Innocenti Declaration, adopted at the World Health Organization/UNICEF Policymakers’ Meeting, ‘‘Breastfeeding in the 1990s: A Global Initiative,’’ held at the Spedale degli Innocenti, Florence, Italy, July 30–August 1, 1990. Thirty countries signed on, with the goal of reaching four operational targets by 1995: (1) appoint a national breastfeeding coordinator of appropriate authority and establish a multisectoral national breastfeeding committee composed of representatives from relevant government departments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and health professional associations; (2) ensure that every facility providing maternity services fully practices all 10 of the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding set out in the joint WHO/UNICEF statement ‘‘Protecting, Promoting and Supporting Breastfeeding: The Special Role of Maternity Services’’; (3) take action to give effect to the principles and aim of all Articles of the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes and subsequent relevant World Health Assembly resolutions in their entirety; and (4) enact imaginative legislation protecting the breastfeeding rights of working women and established means for its enforcement. The Innocenti Declaration also called upon international NGOs to draw up action strategies for protecting, promoting, and supporting breastfeeding, support national situation analyses and development of goals, and en courage and support national authorities in planning, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating their breastfeeding policies. Mr. James Grant, then Director of UNICEF, called upon the NGO community to organize in this regard, and the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA) was born. One of WABA’s first ground-breaking acts was to establish an annual World Breastfeeding Week: a time for action, a time for advocacy, a time for advancing support for breastfeeding. Each year, a different theme is chosen. This ongoing support, the increasing implementation of all four operational targets, the steady flow of evidence showing the vital importance of breastfeeding, and the fact that breastfeeding rates were shown to be responsive to programs of action, all contributed to a call for The Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding, which was endorsed by WBW 2012 image courtesy of WABA