Too little or too much
The state of the world's children report on nutrition
- English
- العربية
The right to good nutrition is out of reach for over 16 million children under five years old in the MENA region. Despite some improvements, trends in children’s nutrition have either begun to stagnate or worsened since 2000.
- More than 7 million (7.1) children suffer from chronic malnutrition (short for their age or stunted).
- 3.7 million children suffer from acute malnutrition and are too thin for their height (wasted) – among them, 1.6 million children are severely wasted.
- 5.4 million children are overweight, up from 3.4 million in 2000, placing the MENA region second in the world for overweight children.
- Sudan accounts for the highest percentage of low birth-weight newborns (32 per cent), wasting (16 per cent) and stunting (38 per cent). Other countries such as Egypt and Oman also register worrying levels of stunting at 21 and 11 per cent respectively.
- Children and young people from the poorest and most marginalized communities account for the largest share of all children suffering from malnutrition, perpetuating poverty across generations.
- An estimated 2 million children in Yemen are acutely malnourished, including nearly 360,000 children under the age of five suffering from severe acute malnutrition who are fighting to survive and are 11 times more likely to die if they do not receive treatment.
"Children from the poorest and most marginalized communities account for the largest share of all children suffering from malnutrition."
Read the full Press Release here.
You can download multimedia assets here.
Here are some fast facts on the situation of nutrition in the region
You can download the PDF version of these infographics here.
For the first time in 20 years, UNICEF’s flagship report examines the issue of children, food and nutrition, providing a fresh perspective on a rapidly evolving challenge.
Despite progress in the past two decades, one third of children under age 5 are malnourished – stunted, wasted or overweight – while two thirds are at risk of malnutrition and hidden hunger because of the poor quality of their diets. At the centre of this challenge is a broken food system that fails to provide children with the diets they need to grow healthy. This report also provides new data and analyses of malnutrition in the 21st century and outlines recommendations to put children’s rights at the heart of food systems.
Download the report and executive summary here.