On Thursday 24th September, Ireland and France announced their intention to support the UNICEF-hosted Child Nutrition Fund (CNF), aimed at scaling up the fight against child and maternal malnutrition worldwide.
This commitment arrives at a pivotal moment. As the latest OECD projections point to a sharp decline in health financing, more than 35 million children continue to face life-threatening malnutrition in conflict and climate-affected regions, where malnutrition remains both a cause and a consequence of humanitarian crises. While 645 million people are still facing hunger, the impact of ODA cuts on food and nutrition security responses also disproportionately affects women and children caught in conflict, displacement and climate shocks. As a consequence, undernutrition in pregnancy and early childhood further drives maternal mortality, stunting, and long-term developmental harm. Yet, addressing these urgent nutrition-related needs remains in our grasp.
In this context, Global Health Advocates welcomes these commitments. As the current presiding Member State of the Council of the EU, Ireland’s announcement of a new four-year programme to combat child malnutrition and hunger across Africa, reaffirms its continued role as a global leader on nutrition financing, building on its previous 2025 Nutrition for Growth (N4G) pledge of dedicating €250 million annually to nutrition from 2026 to 2029.
France is also continuing to demonstrate strong leadership in the fight against malnutrition. After hosting a successful N4G Summit in 2025 and supporting the extension of WHO global nutrition targets, its €1.5 million contribution to the CNFis another concrete step towards translating its longstanding engagement on nutrition into additional resources. Against a backdrop of shrinking ODA, France confirmed its innovative approach by partnering with philanthropies to multiply the impact of its investment through catalytic funding. Yet the scale of current needs, including in famine-affected contexts such as Sudan where more than 8 million women and children need nutrition assistance,calls for sustained investment commensurate with those needs. We encourage France to build on this initial contribution and support life-saving interventions, including maternal nutrition, micronutrient supplementation and the treatment of acute malnutrition.
Following Ireland’s leadership, the EU should now build on these commitments in a Team Europe spirit: we urge the EU to commit dedicated funding to nutrition, ensure an appropriate EU response to rapidly escalating nutrition crises, notably through mechanisms such as the Child Nutrition Fund. As the European Union makes progress in the negotiations on the next Multiannual Financial Framework (2028-2034), we call on the EU to preserve a strong, ambitious and adequately resourced nutrition component of its external action budget, particularly in the humanitarian envelope. The evidence is clear: every dollar invested in addressing undernutrition can generate returns of up to $23.
Global Health Advocates stands ready to work with EU Institutions, Member States and partners to ensure that the next MFF reflects the scale of today’s nutrition and humanitarian needs.
Global Report on Food Crises, 2026
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