At the end of the first week of the 78th World Health Assembly, countries endorsed an important resolution recommitting to tackling malnutrition in mothers, infants, and young children.
This resolution extended the deadline of the WHA nutrition targets from 2025 to 2030, aligning with the timeline and ambition of the Sustainable Development Goals, and added several new and more ambitious targets, such as diversifying diets and improving rates of breastfeeding. The resolution comes at a critical time: Progress against the targets needs immense acceleration.
Yet this comes at a time when public development assistance from donor nations is declining, stretched thin by competing domestic priorities and economic slowdowns. At the same time, governments in the global south, burdened by high debt servicing costs, have limited fiscal space to invest in crucial areas such as nutrition, health, education, and climate resilience. Debt service repayments already exceeded global grantmaking by $50 billion in 2024, even before the dramatic shifts of the past year.
About the authors
Anna Hakobyan
Anna Hakobyan is the chief impact officer and executive director for nutrition at the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation. Before joining CIFF in 2009, Anna led the learning and evaluation function at Y Care International, working on programs in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Before this, Anna was a senior policy and research coordinator at Transparency International, where she developed and managed an evidence-based advisory desk for governments and multilateral agencies on good governance and transparency. In the early years of her career, Anna worked at the World Bank and civil society organizations.
Matt Freeman
Matt Freeman is the executive director of Stronger Foundations for Nutrition. He has previously held leadership roles at the One Acre Fund, the Girl Effect (spun out from the Nike Foundation), the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
