Topic: 2026 – Combating Malnutrition
Country: Zimbabwe
Delegate Name: Eva Carr
2/8/26
United Nations Children’s Fund
From: Zimbabwe
Delegate Name: Eva Carr
Topic: Combating Malnutrition
Malnutrition threatens the lives of over half a million Zimbabwean children under the age of five today. Approximately 580,000 Zimbabwean children live in severe food poverty putting them at risk of up to 50% of wasting – a form of malnutrition.
Zimbabwe is attempting to address this critical issue of malnutrition and its effects on Zimbabwean children. Over 61% of children experience income poverty and 36% of children experience food insecurity. While Zimbabwe has numerous programs helping to spread support for reducing malnutrition, these programs have not sufficiently reduced the number of children affected and as a result, it and its fatal effects on children continue to rise. In 2024, 36,724 children received nutritional meals across 123 districts because the Emergency Social Cash Transfer (ESCT) program funded by UNICEF supported integrated school nutrition, education, and social protection services for vulnerable children. However, many programs like this one, are underfunded and lack success in officially reducing malnutrition in Zimbabwean children. Zimbabwe is a low income country. In 2022, it ranked 159 out of 193 in the Human Development Index and according to a sample survey conducted in 2000, 89% of households interviewed reported food shortages for almost the entire year.
Complicating the issue is severe drought in southern Africa. The drought has destroyed harvests in a region where 70% of the population relies on agriculture to survive, leaving Zimbabweans with a lack of essential resources they rely on. Extreme weather events like El Niño, a recurring weather pattern resulting in warming in ocean surface temperature, have caused drought throughout southern Africa drying out maize crops, harming agriculture, and livestock – essential resources for nutrition resulting in water scarcity and food insecurity. Even though El Niño has passed, it occurs roughly every two to seven years on a repeating cycle of environmental damage and furthermore human (specifically children) health damage – a leading cause of malnutrition. The lean season is another period that could severely heighten acute malnutrition and water scarcity in Zimbabwe as this is a time when food availability is at its lowest. It starts between planting and harvesting from late May/early June and can last until November.
Other than intense, recurrent weather patterns and poverty affecting the source of food, other factors contributing to malnutrition include: HIV/AIDS which most commonly affects children whose mothers test positively for HIV, putting them at higher risk for stunting, wasting, and being underweight, limited employment opportunities in families, and a lack of access to local markets.
Combating malnutrition in Zimbabwe requires interventions providing nutritious food and clean water to vulnerable Zimbabwean children, training families to look out for signs of malnutrition in a child, ensuring food distribution in programs by monitoring and evaluating interventions, and partnering with healthcare providers who can treat malnutrition.
Zimbabwe seeks collaboration and possible solutions similar to its own from other delegates to this dire issue in hope of reducing and someday ceasing malnutrition and its fatal effects on children.
Citations
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/fsn3.2509
https://www.fundsforngos.org/all-proposals/a-sample-proposal-for-addressing-child-malnutrition-in-zimbabwe/#:~:text=Proposed%20Intervention:%20Access%20to%20Nutritious,for%20overall%20health%20and%20nutrition.&text=Win%20more%20Grants-,Premium%20Membership%20helps%20you%20find%20new%20grants,you%20to%20raise%20them%20successfully.&text=Implementing%20water%20purification%20systems%20and,diseases%20that%20often%20accompany%20malnutrition.
https://www.unocha.org/news/five-things-you-need-know-about-el-nino-induced-drought-southern-africa
https://centreforpublicimpact.org/public-impact-fundamentals/tackling-malnutrition-in-zimbabwe/
