On October 28 to 31 2025, 11 SUN countries represented by delegations composed of government officials including the SUN Focal Point or SUN Secretariat representative and representatives from the Ministry of Finance or Budget and Planning, civil society representatives, and partners who support nutrition financing and public financial management (PFM) in the country, came together to discuss and share experiences with budgeting, planning, financial tracking and other essential PFM actions that improve nutrition outcomes. This convening built on the experience of the 2024 Nutrition Financing Workshop and drew heavily on the findings of a recent regional study in Asia that documented experiences with nutrition budget tracking across countries and generated lessons learned.
The workshop was an opportunity for capacity strengthening and peer learning across countries on nutrition-responsive PFM actions for the region. Across the 4-day workshop, three important themes on what drives country progress emerged:
- Making the case for investing in nutrition remains the foundation of sustainable nutrition financing. Communicating a clear rationale for why investing in nutrition is important to a country’s broader socioeconomic goals is essential for decision makers to unlock funding.
- Having the right policy levers that enable sustainable nutrition financing is important as they incentivize budget and planning officers to embed nutrition actions into annual plans and be held accountable.
- All of this must be executed with government financing mechanisms and tools within PFM systems that enable effective and efficient usage of funds that encourage multi-year investment in activities that work best to achieve country goals.
Each of these thematic areas are explored in depth in the workshop summary report, along with the major challenges and bottlenecks countries reported encountering under each theme, as well as lessons learned and best practices countries shared during the workshop.
In addition to the key themes on driving country progress, clear set of priority activities were identified by workshop participants for the region to take forward:
- Review and align on a new narrative for sustainable nutrition financing in the context of Public Financial Management to support making the case for nutrition and ensure alignment of all relevant stakeholders in this collaborative effort. This includes a review of existing guidance on:
- Nutrition budget tracking based on country experience.
- Prioritization of underfunded nutrition actions across sectors [e.g. nutrition investment taxonomy across sectors based on latest evidence.]
- Costing of multisectoral nutrition plans with a financing strategy, ensuring they are aligned to and inform sector strategies
- Establish a Regional Community of Practice on Sustainable Nutrition Financing including routine virtual calls for country guidance and update sharing, and a regular annual convening of the regional capacity strengthening workshop.
Each country developed their own first draft Country Action Plan which they are taking forward to action. This regional guidance will help accelerate and enhance what countries are able to achieve.
FCDP is a SUN Movement resource available to all 66 SUN Countries. The platform aims to transform the nutrition financing landscape by inspiring and igniting government leaders to elevate nutrition financing as a priority and accelerate impact across sectors.
