GRAN believes that access to nourishing food is every child’s human right. Children don’t just need food. They have a right to it.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) recognizes that all children up to 18 years of age are entitled to inalienable rights, including the right to healthy food and adequate nutrition, the right to non-discrimination, and the right to have their best interests considered in all matters that affect them. 1
And yet, the world is failing in its duties to protect these human rights. Children at home and around the globe are hungry.
Child hunger is an especially critical problem within the broader issue of global hunger because of how children are impacted 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.
According to UNICEF, more than a quarter of the world’s children under 5 are living in severe food poverty, and fully two-thirds of the world’s youngest children are not getting all the essential nutrients they need to grow and to thrive. 2 Globally, when a child dies, half the time the underlying cause is malnutrition. 3
In 2024/2025 GRAN focused on child hunger as part of our continued advocacy on the Right to Food. We dedicated our efforts to raising public awareness, speaking to our MPs about the issue, and urging increased investment by Canada in maternal and child nutrition in the Global South.
