World Food Programme and UNICEF Fight Child Wasting Where It Hits Hardest

The darkest moments for Nyanene Gatdoor come when her 2-year-old son Tuach sobs from hunger.

“When the baby is crying in front of you, and you have nothing to give him, you feel pain in your heart,” says the 25-year-old mother of 3.

Gatdoor and her family live in a displacement camp in South Sudan’s Unity State, counting among millions of South Sudanese uprooted from their homes by violence or extreme weather events.

Their precarious existence – surviving on food aid and what Gatdoor can bring in from harvesting water lilies and selling firewood – has pushed Tuach into Africa’s growing ranks of malnourished children.

“Food security and malnutrition are impacted by what has been a perfect storm of events,” says Aachal Chand, head of nutrition for the World Food Programme (WFP) in South Sudan, describing a mix of weather extremes, unrest, high food prices and the spillover of the Sudan conflict, driving spiking malnutrition among mothers and children.

More than 3 million South Sudanese mothers and young children are at risk of malnutrition this year – amounting to more than one-quarter of the country’s overall population.

That has made South Sudan a malnutrition flashpoint. It is one of 15 crisis-affected countries targeted in a new partnership between WFP and the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, to eradicate child wasting.

The condition – when a youngster is underweight for her or his height – is the deadliest form of malnutrition.

“Every minute a child becomes wasted. Every minute a child’s life is dangerously at risk,” says WFP Executive Director (ED) Cindy McCain. “This is not a statistic – it’s an emergency.”

Two-thirds of all children suffering from wasting worldwide – or 33 million – live in the 15 flashpoint countries.

Wasting is a life-threatening condition caused by insufficient intake of nutritious foods and nutrients along with frequent illness.

Those children who do survive wasting can still suffer from long-term and devastating impacts on their development and achievement – and, more broadly, on a country’s next generation. Acting fast and early is the only solution.

Ahead of the crisis

The WFP-UNICEF partnership means the two agencies will collaborate closely in the 15 crisis countries to detect, prevent and treat malnutrition.

By pooling our resources, we’ll reduce duplication, enhance coordination – and reach more at-risk women and children with support.

“We’re focused on getting ahead of the crisis, preventing wasting in the first place,” says ED McCain.

Chand adds that, in South Sudan, “the impact of the work that WFP and its partners are doing cannot be underestimated.”

The joint work, she says, includes both delivering nutritious food to women and children, and key messages on dietary diversity and hygiene, along with addressing underlying causes of malnutrition.

“We are preventing child mortality,” Chand says. “We are preventing children from deteriorating into situations where they may get a disease, and that disease spells death for them. The work we are doing is really life-saving work.”

Nyanene Gatdoor and her children count among the thousands of families uprooted by South Sudan’s worst flooding in decades, which has submerged large parts of the country’s northern Unity State.

The floodwaters have wiped out livelihoods based on farming and livestock raising, and driven up hunger, malnutrition and the risk of contracting waterborne diseases.

Gatdoor’s family now live at a camp for displaced people in Unity State’s capital of Bentiu. They are dependent on WFP food assistance, which has already been halved due to funding shortfalls.

She tries make up for the loss by grinding flour from water lilies growing in the flood waters surrounding Bentiu, and spending long hours away collecting firewood to sell.

When Gatdoor’s youngest son Tuach became malnourished, she took him to a nearby WFP-supported clinic for treatment. She now feeds Tuach a nutrition-packed peanut paste to recover.

Gatdoor has also learned good hygiene practices at the clinic that help her family stay healthy.

“I want to send them to school with the money I get from selling firewood,” Gatdoor says of Tuach and her other children. “So that they are able to help themselves – and help me as well.”

In Ethiopia – another child malnutrition flashpoint – mother-of-two Desta is also displaced, following conflict and unrest that gripped the northern state of Tigray.

She gets WFP nutritional support for her 8-month-old daughter, Capital, who suffers from moderate acute malnutrition – but it is not enough.

“When she gets sick, I get worried,” Desta says, adding, “it’s about food. It’s about food first.”

Soaring hunger, shrinking funds

Millions of people in Ethiopia face severe hunger this year. More than 4 million women and children are severely malnourished. In parts of Tigray and three other Ethiopian regions, rates of child wasting have surpassed the 15 percent emergency threshold.

WFP’s goal is to support malnutrition prevention and treatment for 2 million of the most vulnerable Ethiopian mothers and young children. But we risk having to halt their assistance at the end of June, unless more funding is provided.

“WFP has the most amazing ability to get food to those who need it,” said Michele Quintaglie, WFP Communications Director, during a recent visit to Ethiopia. “The only thing that’s limiting us right now is funding.”

Little Essaie, who lives in the Central African Republic, is one example of how – when funding is available – we can make a difference.

When the 18-month-old fell ill, his father Anselme Mandagueze took him to a WFP-supported clinic for treatment in the central town of Bambari. The toddler was diagnosed not only with with malaria, but also malnutrition.

A young widower, whose wife died months after delivering Essaie, Mandagueze received WFP’s specialized nutritional products to treat Essaie. He also received counselling on good hygiene and nutrition, and weekly follow-ups from the clinic.

“My priority is the health of my child,” says Mandagueze, 20, whose love for his first and only child “gives me a desire to fight for him”.

While CAR is not a malnutrition flashpoint, nearly 400,000 young children and mothers are malnourished in the country – some acutely so.

“In dozens of supported centres, we’ve seen a drop in severe acute malnutrition,” says Dr. Yandi Guerevicko, district health chief for the Bambari area. WFP and other assistance, he adds, “has helped to reduce mortality.”

Denmark, the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, the Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Gates Foundation count among our public and private donors supporting WFP’s nutrition programmes in the Central African Republic, Ethiopia and South Sudan.

Climate Conflicts Nutrition Emergencies Central African Republic Ethiopia South Sudan

*SOURCE: World Food Programme. Go to ORIGINAL: https://www.wfp.org/stories/wfp-and-unicef-fight-child-wasting-where-it-hits-hardest 2025 Human Wrongs Watch