Financing
The Child Nutrition Fund: Innovative financing to bring an end to child wasting
What is the Child Nutrition Fund (CNF)?
The Child Nutrition Fund (CNF) is a UNICEF-led financing and coordination mechanism that supports countries with the greatest needs to scale up high-impact nutrition policies, programmes and supplies for children and women. It works with governments and partners to strengthen nutrition systems and deliver sustainable results at scale.
Why do we need a CNF?
Despite strong evidence on what works to improve nutrition, financing for child and maternal nutrition remains fragmented, short-term and unevenly allocated. Many countries struggle to translate global commitments into sustained, nationally led programmes, while access to essential nutrition supplies remains unreliable in high-burden settings.
The CNF was established to address these challenges by aligning global and domestic resources, incentivising long-term national investment, and improving the availability of essential nutrition commodities – enabling countries to plan, scale and sustain nutrition action more effectively.
The CNF Mission
The CNF’s mission is to mobilise and align global and domestic financing to support governments to scale up proven, high-impact nutrition actions for children and women, working through national systems and in partnership with global nutrition partners.
By 2030, the CNF aims to support global efforts to reach 320 million children and women each year with essential nutrition services. This includes:
- 70 million women with services to prevent wasting and other forms of undernutrition
- 230 million children with services to prevent wasting and other forms of undernutrition
- 20 million children with treatment for life-threatening forms of undernutrition, defined as severe wasting and moderate wasting at higher risk of poor outcomes
The CNF supports countries implementing national plans under the UN Secretary-General’s Global Action Plan (GAP) on Child Wasting by helping to translate commitments into financed, coordinated and scalable action.
For more information, visit the CNF website.
