Analysis

GOALKEEPERS 2024 REPORT: THE RACE TO NOURISH A WARMING WORLD

Published on 19/09/2024.

The next edition of the Nutrition for Growth Summit, organized by France on March 27 and 28, 2025 in Paris, represents a unique opportunity to engage the international community in a more effective fight against malnutrition. In the run-up to this international summit, Focus 2030 devotes a special edition to the challenges of (mal)nutrition worldwide, highlighting the views and expectations of organizations, personalities and experts involved in the field of nutrition.

On September 17, 2024, the Gates Foundation released the new edition of its annual Goalkeepers report, entitled “The Race to nourish a Warming World”. This year, the report emphasizes the urgency of increasing investment in global health and nutrition, and developing solutions to protect more than 400 million children worldwide from the most severe consequences of hunger.

Since 2017, the Goalkeepers report has assessed progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted by UN member states in 2015. Among these goals, SDG 2 on “Zero Hunger”, is at the heart of global priorities in the fight against malnutrition, with a target set in 2012 by the World Health Organization to reduce the number of stunted children under five by 40% by 2025.

A worrying global picture

Despite significant progress between 2000 and 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic has brought many advances to a halt, or even reversed them. According to the report, current figures are alarming

In 2023, 148 million children under the age of five – almost one in five worldwide – were stunted.
400 million children, or two-thirds of the world’s children, do not receive the nutrients they need for growth.
Nearly half of all child deaths worldwide are due to malnutrition.
People who have suffered from hunger in childhood are 33% less likely to escape poverty.
Without a response from the international community and appropriate funding, climate change will cause over 40 million children to suffer from stunted growth, and over 28 million to be victims of the most severe forms of malnutrition, by 2050.

Between 2024 and 2050, climate change will stunt the growth of 40 million more children, and 28 million more will be emaciated.- Bill Gates

Funding to fight malnutrition declines in the worst-affected countries

More than half of all child deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, yet health-related official development assistance (ODA) to Africa has been falling steadily since 2010, from 40% of total aid to 25% .

The call to action :

Maintain funding for global health, including vaccines and medicines.
Support organizations such as Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Immediately tackle child malnutrition using a new funding mechanism, the Child Nutrition Fund, to implement innovative solutions, encourage domestic funding and coordinate efforts to end child malnutrition, set up by the Gates Foundation and UNICEF.