Child hunger is a critical problem within the broader issue of global hunger because of how children are affected by malnutrition. Children -- particularly those under the age of five -- have unique nutritional needs to ensure their healthy development. Malnutrition in these crucial developmental years can irreparably harm a child’s future, causing permanent damage to their cognitive development, physical growth and health, and endangering their very survival. Chronically malnourished children risk facing lives marked by illness, compromised learning, and poverty, with consequences that extend across generations.
Child Food Poverty
This past summer, UNICEF released its first ever report on child food poverty. The findings were stark. More than a quarter of the world's children under 5 are living in severe food poverty. When you add in those living in moderate food poverty, fully two-thirds of the world’s youngest children are not getting enough essential nutrients to grow and to thrive. 1
In 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that almost 150 million children experienced stunting, and 45 million children experienced wasting, the most severe forms of chronic and acute malnutrition. This prevents them from growing to their full potential and, in the worst cases, from growing up at all. Globally, when a child dies, half the time the underlying cause is malnutrition.2
We Know What to Do…
"We already know so much of what works to prevent malnutrition in all its forms, from conception, through early childhood and into adolescence. But this is a battle we cannot win on our own. It needs the political determination of national governments, backed by clear financial commitments, as well as policies and incentives that encourage the private sector’s investment in nutritious, safe and affordable food for children, young people, women, and families. And, increasingly, it needs a determination to make children’s nutrition a priority across not just the food system but also in the health, water and sanitation, education and social protection systems. Success in each of these supports success in all. ... Good nutrition paves the way for a fair chance in life. Let us work together to lower these barriers and to ensure that every child, young person, and woman has the nutritious, safe, affordable, and sustainable diets they need at every moment of life to meet their full potential.” -- Henrietta H. Fore UNICEF Executive Director (2018 – 2022) in The State of the World’s Children 2019 Children, Food, and Nutrition: Growing Well in a Changing World.
Dig Deeper…
- Child Food Poverty: Nutrition Deprivation in Early Childhood – Explore the six key findings in this 2024 report from UNICEF.
- How to End Child Food Poverty -- 3-minute video from UNICEF defining child food poverty and explaining its root causes and three actions governments can take to address it.
- Learn about the recently launched global Child Nutrition Fund. The Child Nutrition Fund (CNF) is a UNICEF-led fund designed to enable the sustainable scale-up of policies, programs, practices, and supplies to prevent, detect, and treat malnutrition in children and women.
- Ending child hunger and food insecurity needs to be a top priority in Canada as well as globally -- Article by Tina Moffat, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, McMaster University, addressing the issue of child hunger in Canada (June 2022)
This is the first installment in GRAN's second series of Small Sips on the Right to Food. This new series will focus on issues related to child hunger.
