SUN Countries scale up financing for nutrition

The global food and nutrition crisis, magnified by disruptions linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, has been threatening to increase malnutrition rates in all Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Countries. The situation is compounded by constrained donor and domestic resources due to the pandemic and the cost of living crisis. As a result, the need for concessional, private sector, and innovative finance is more urgent than ever. 

That is why SUN Countries are exploring a number of opportunities to scale up financing for nutrition. The SUN Movement supports collaboration to enable access for SUN Countries to various initiatives and to ensure that these financing mechanisms are part of the solution to mobilizing more nutrition funding, with the ultimate goal of reaching the 2025 World Health Assembly and 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development nutrition targets.

To respond to countries’ requests seeking support with nutrition financing, the SUN Movement Secretariat has signed a short-term technical assistance contract with Development Initiatives (DI) to provide technical support on capacity strengthening for budget analysis. Over a period of three months, SUN worked with Development International to deliver capacity-building workshops on budget analysis and nutrition plan costing in five countries – Burundi, Costa Rica, Guinea-Bissau, Honduras and Sudan. 

In each country, a range of stakeholders and nutrition experts were trained to identify nutrition funding gaps and empowered to advocate for more targeted financing from Governments and partners.

Despite the challenges prevalent in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, SUN Countries have continued to receive technical assistance to strengthen their national nutrition plan financing management skills. This  support continues to show promise, and the SUN Movement Secretariat is committed to continuing to support nutrition financing in SUN Countries.