GENEVA, 24 April 2025 - "The Global Report on Food Crises makes a stark point, that famine is no longer just a risk, it is a harsh reality children are living through right now.
"Chapter 3 of the report, on acute malnutrition, shows that today's food crises are also deep nutrition crises, driven by conflict, displacement, and the collapse of essential services. This is made far worse by reductions in humanitarian and development funding.
"In 2025, an estimated 35.5 million children under the age of five were acutely malnourished across 23 affected countries. Nearly 10 million of these children are suffering from severe wasting, a condition that is life‑threatening, but entirely preventable and treatable.
"Children with severe wasting are too thin for their height, their immune systems weaken to the extent that ordinary childhood illnesses can become fatal, and their risk of dying increases by 12 times compared with well-nourished children.
"At the same time, 9.2 million pregnant and breastfeeding women were acutely malnourished. When women cannot meet their own nutritional needs, their babies face a higher risk of low birthweight, illness, and death - this, from the very start of their lives.
"Last year, for the first time in two decades, we had two famines declared at the same time - in Gaza and Sudan. In both contexts, children experienced far more than hunger. They faced the collapse of health, nutrition and water systems, severe disease outbreaks, and extreme constraints on humanitarian access.
"In Gaza, the report notes one of the fastest deteriorations in child nutrition ever recorded, with the number of acutely malnourished children more than doubling in a matter of months. These are not just numbers. These are young lives.
"I was there on mission exactly when famine was declared in 2025. What I saw inside health facilities is something I will never forget. Clinics were overflowing, corridors, waiting rooms, even stairwells filled with mothers and fathers clutching children whose bodies had been hollowed out by hunger.
"I met infants too weak to cry, their skin stretched thin over fragile bones, nurses weighing them again and again, hoping for a sign of improvement that rarely came. Parents were pleading-not for comfort, but for the simplest things: a sachet of therapeutic food, clean water, a chance.
"Health workers were doing everything they could, working without pause, but they were overwhelmed-short of supplies, short of space, short of time. This is what famine looks like in real life: not a statistic, but a slow, visible collapse of childhood, unfolding in overcrowded rooms where hope is rationed alongside food.
"In Sudan, famine was confirmed in areas where families were trapped, services had broken down, and children were increasingly cut off from lifesaving care. As you know, these are not isolated crises.
"Four places - Gaza, Sudan, Myanmar, and South Sudan - are classified as facing very severe nutrition crises, where children are exposed to a deadly convergence of poor diets, high disease burden, and they lack basic services. These are not inevitable, they are the result of choices.
"Across most nutrition crises in the report, acute malnutrition is driven not by food shortages" alone, but by the simultaneous failure of ensuring safe, unimpeded humanitarian access to food, health care, nutrition services and supplies, and safe water.
This is why children are becoming dangerously malnourished even where food is available.
"The outlook for 2026 is deeply worrying.
"Rising conflict, climate shocks, and global market disruptions threaten to push more children into acute malnutrition, just as nutrition services are being scaled back and access is becoming more restricted.
"For children, timing is everything. A child with severe acute malnutrition can die in weeks. With timely treatment, they can survive and recover. But the growing risk of famine requires investing in prevention, in addition to treatment for children.
"UNICEF's message is clear:
- Famine prevention must start earlier, before children reach the brink of death. We must invest in systems that enable early warnings.
- Response efforts must prioritize multi-sectoral lifesaving action combined with sustained political, diplomatic, and operational action to prevent further deterioration. And to secure safe, unimpeded humanitarian access.
- And children, pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers must be at the centre of prevention and response efforts that link nutrition with health, water, sanitation, and social protection programmes.
"Finally, this report is also a warning on data.
"Early warning enables early action. Yet, nutrition data systems themselves are under threat from funding cuts and access constraints. Protecting these systems is essential to saving lives.
If we fail to act now, the cost will be counted not just in reports - but in children's lives and their lost futures."
