Standing Together For Nutrition- News Release
Experts warn of the devastating toll of aid cuts on malnourished children and how it will impact generations to come—not just as huge human cost—but also a huge cost to development, economic growth, and future global prosperity.
Paris, Geneva, Washington DC, 26th March 2025
A new analysis published today in the scientific journal Nature by global nutrition leaders reveals an alarming truth: recent aid cuts threaten to increase the number of malnourished infants and deprive lifesaving treatment for 2.3 million of the most severely affected infants in low- and middle-income countries, with a looming threat of 369,000 child deaths per year—deaths that can be prevented. In addition, these cuts are pulling the rug out from under vital programs that support nutrition and keep millions healthy, including programs in agriculture, school feeding, water and sanitation.
This bleak picture is compounded by the aid crisis that has been brewing for some time now. While the USAID cuts make up a significant share, several donor countries like the UK, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium have announced cuts ranging from 40% to 25% over next 3-5 years. All of this is a major setback in combating malnutrition around the world. This amounts to a cut of 44% in international support for global nutrition programs, totalling USD 1.6 billion in 2022 alone. The real impact of this is likely to be generational because malnourished infants are likely to be malnourished adults and give birth to malnourished children. And the misery and mortality cascade down the years.
Experts in the Standing Together for Nutrition Consortium are ringing the alarm bell by assessing the scale of the crisis and its far-reaching consequences. Beyond the immediate threat to hundreds of thousands of lives, these cuts will make the world less safe, less secure, and less prosperous, as nutrition is fundamental to preventing migration, conflict, and to promoting productivity. It is a fundamental driver of the Sustainable Development Goals.
The domino effects of these aid cuts are already being felt in many places across the world. In Nigeria, the charity Helen Keller International had to stop its malnutrition treatment program for 5.6 million children. In Sudan, almost 80 per cent of emergency food kitchens are closed. In Ethiopia, supplies of nutrient-rich foods used to treat about 1 million severely malnourished children annually may run out by May 2025, and a data system to track famine risks sits idle, disrupting early warning systems for humanitarian planning and resource allocation for emergencies. In Bangladesh, according to UNICEF, the number of children needing emergency treatment for severe acute malnutrition in the Rohingya refugee camps has surged by 27 per cent in February 2025 compared to the same period last year. In Haiti, aid cuts have left about 13,000 people without access to vital nutrition services, impacting more than half a million, NGOs warn.
“The loss of hundreds of thousands of young lives because we are not treating severe acute malnutrition is not just a terrible human tragedy—it’s also a huge setback for economic growth and future global prosperity,”
“Severe acute malnutrition, or severe wasting, the most lethal form of undernutrition, affects 13.6 million children worldwide and is responsible for one fifth of deaths among children under five. Left untreated, up to 60% of affected children might die. Yet, as the need for treatment rises, resources are being stretched dangerously thin. The abrupt withdrawal of donor support is leaving millions of critically ill children without access to these life-saving programs and undermining the institutional capacity, expertise, and data infrastructure needed to deliver essential nutrition services,” -she adds.
Loss of donor funding is also jeopardising the procurement and distribution of ready-to-use therapeutic foods (RUTFs)—an energy-dense, micronutrient-rich paste made from peanuts, milk powder, sugar, oils, and vitamins and minerals, used to treat severe acute malnutrition. USAID alone supported half of the global RUTF supply, much of it produced by just two companies in the U.S.
These findings are critical to share, but they are no surprise. When you stop lifesaving treatments for severely malnourished children under the age of three, you guarantee significant levels of infant mortality.
These children must be protected above all. We need to change the way we finance nutrition—we need the development finance institutions, like the development banks and concessional lenders, to up their game for nutrition and we need to find ways of aligning nutrition outcomes and business outcomes via workforce nutrition programs for young women.
Finally, everyone who cares about nutrition must find new and creative ways of supporting innocent children at risk of this terrible condition—wherever those children are in the world. Malnutrition destroys lives, families, societies and economies. We can end the destruction.
~ Lawrence Haddad, Executive Director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition,
These findings should prompt the global community to act with urgency in restoring life-saving interventions, scaling up essential nutrition actions, and working with all stakeholders to prioritise and expand financing options. The article underscores the urgent need to work with governments to rethink and reshape how nutrition is financed and delivered. That means diversifying financing solutions, including increasing domestic investment, tapping into sectors like agriculture and climate to make them more nutrition-smart, and challenging international finance institutions to focus on the productivity opportunities of reducing malnutrition.
The experts call upon governments, donors, and philanthropists to commit to addressing this challenge together.
“Failure to act now will result not only in a dramatic increase in child mortality but also long-term societal damage that will reverberate across generations. It is imperative that global development partners, governments, and donors mobilize immediately to safeguard nutrition for the world’s most vulnerable populations. Our collective future depends on it,” the experts concluded in their comment to Nature.
Author details:
- Saskia Osendarp, Standing Together for Nutrition. Executive Director Micronutrient Forum, 1201 Eye Street NW, Washington DC
- Marie Ruel, Standing Together for Nutrition Member. Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI, 1201 Eye Street NW, Washington DC.
- Emorn Udomkesmalee, Standing Together for Nutrition Member. Senior Advisor, Institute of Nutrition, Mahidol University, 999 Phuttamonthon 4 Road, Salaya, Phuttamonthon District, Nakhon Pathom Province 73170,
- Masresha Tessema, Standing Together for Nutrition Member. Director of Nutrition, Environmental Health and Non-communicable Disease Research Directorate, Ethiopian Public Health Institute, Swaziland Street, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
- Lawrence Haddad, Standing Together for Nutrition Member. Executive Director, The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), Rue Varembé 7 1202 Geneva, Switzerland.