Nutrition

What is it?

Child undernutrition is a widespread health issue, taking forms such as wasting (low weight-for-height), stunting (low height-for-age), and micronutrient deficiencies. These can all occur simultaneously.

Malnutrition arises from underlying factors such as:

• inadequate dietary intake
• limited access to nutritious food and safe water, poor sanitation, and lack of access to health care and social services
• inadequate childcare
• lack of education.

These factors are often structural, linked to poverty and are exacerbated by disaster, conflict, disease outbreak or forced displacement.

Why is this important?

Child undernutrition is a leading contributor to death and disability globally and is responsible for nearly half of deaths in children under 5 years old. It weakens immunity and leads to increased frequency and severity of common infections, putting children at risk of delayed recovery and even death.

Illnesses can, in turn, become a cause of undernutrition in a potentially lethal cycle of worsening illness, deteriorating nutritional status and repeated infections. Therefore, malnutrition must be addressed to tackle diseases such as malaria, diarrhoea, and pneumonia.

Acute undernutrition remains a major concern in humanitarian emergencies and protracted crises. In 2023, over 36 million children under 5 years old were acutely malnourished in 32 countries, of whom nearly 10 million suffered from severe acute malnutrition, according to the 2024 Global Report on Food Crises.

Malnutrition leads to higher fatality rates in children: a severely malnourished child is roughly 11 times more likely to die of a common infection than a healthy counterpart.

148.1 million children under 5 years old were affected by stunting globally in 2022 – nearly all in Asia and Africa, according to the WHO and UNICEF Joint Child Malnutrition Estimates 2023. Whilst stunting cannot be treated, it can be prevented by addressing chronic undernutrition and implementing nutrition-sensitive approaches.

How are we helping?

The EU is committed to a world free from all forms of malnutrition by 2030.

The EU addresses malnutrition through an integrated multi-sectoral approach, through a continuum, combining (i) the assessment of the nutritional status of children, (ii) the emergency interventions providing life-saving treatment to acute malnutrition, iii) development agri-food initiatives enabling local and sustainable access to food and healthy diets and by doing so preventing of all forms of malnutrition and (iv) targeted research aiming at finding better and more sustainable solutions, to be implemented with local partners, but also increasing the local resilience and the impact of the external funding.

Humanitarian aid only addresses the emergency response in humanitarian crises or fragile environments, providing life-saving treatment to children under 5 years old suffering from severe acute malnutrition, as well as medical and nutritional assistance to young pregnant or lactating women.

Treatment

Acute undernutrition, or wasting, results in a high risk of death despite being both preventable and curable. The Community-based Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) adopted by UNICEF, the WHO and WFP in 2007 has led to a significant transformation in addressing acute malnutrition across 70 countries. However, CMAM’s impact remains limited.

To tackle acute undernutrition in crisis situations, the EU and its humanitarian partners intervene by supporting nutritional programmes. The EU is committed to support the implementation of the 2023 WHO Guidelines on wasting. They foresee the integration of nutrition response in the health care services, the strengthening of the referral systems and the treatment of the child and mother as an entity. In high-risk areas, the EU also strengthens the response capacities and shock responsivity of existing community and health systems, as a key factor for increased sustainability.

At the Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit in Tokyo 2021, the EU pledged the EU pledged to commit €2.5 billion to combat all forms of malnutrition. This pledge had been surpassed by €1.9 billion by the end of 2024 to a total of €4.4 billion, of which €1.3 billion in humanitarian aid. 

In 2024, the EU allocated €650 million to humanitarian projects with nutrition as the main or significant objective. 
However, more funding is still needed. In the last 4 years, only less than 50% of the financial needs have been met, while the number of crises (determined by war, conflicts, or climate change) has been exponentially increasing. 

We have been implementing programmatic partnerships since 2021, as part of our commitment to facilitate partners’ access to more predictable and flexible funding (as committed under the Great Bargain). These approaches include multi-year funding, creating more reliability and facilitating more forward-looking and sustainable programming. For nutrition, several multi-year contracts have been implemented over the last years in Western and Eastern Africa.

Prevention

While treatment of acute malnutrition is essential to saving lives, it is increasingly clear that the focus should simultaneously be on actions to prevent further suffering.

The EU considers nutrition within all its programming to foster a nutritional impact in humanitarian interventions and reinforce the link between humanitarian and development programming. Effective investment in multi-sectoral approaches to tackle the underlying causes of malnutrition is therefore essential.

Examples of prevention strategies include:

• food security and livelihood interventions
• the provision of access to safe drinking water and sanitation facilities for affected communities
• free access to healthcare for children and pregnant and lactating mothers.
• Education of children and caregivers on the importance of healthy diets and diversity
• Training and support to young farmers for the production of local crops, vegetables and fruits and their use for family consumption
   

Innovation

The EU supports innovative and simplified approaches aimed at optimising the performance, coverage, and cost-efficiency of treatment protocols.
The EU supports so-called “simplified approaches” that allow the provision of waste treatment in areas where it would be otherwise impossible, for example, by using community health workers.

Other approaches including digitalisation also have a huge role to play and can facilitate both access to and delivery of service, e.g., in determining and monitoring with mobile devices the nutritional condition of beneficiaries.

_{Last updated: 27/03/2025}

Facts & figures

In 2023, over 36 million children under 5 years old were acutely malnourished in 32 countries, of whom nearly 10 million suffered from severe acute malnutrition.

In 2024, the EU allocated €650 million to humanitarian projects with nutrition as the main or significant objective.