Target 3.2: End preventable deaths of newborns and children
By 2030, end preventable deaths of newborns and children under 5 years of age, with all countries aiming to reduce neonatal mortality to at least as low as 12 per 1,000 live births and under-5 mortality to at least as low as 25 per 1,000 live births
Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Why shareholder democracy is helpful
An estimated 4.9 million children under five died worldwide in 2024, 47 percent of them newborns. The causes were preterm complications, birth asphyxia, pneumonia, diarrhea and malaria, and more than 80 percent of the deaths occurred in sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia. Primary health care and vaccination programs drive progress and are public. The main corporate-conduct channel is infant feeding. WHO and UNICEF find that the 55 billion dollar formula industry reached 51 percent of the 8,500 parents and pregnant women they surveyed across eight countries with marketing that violates the 1981 international code on the marketing of breast-milk substitutes. They also find that companies approach health workers with gifts, samples and sponsorship. Owners of Nestle, Danone and Reckitt can press on compliance with that code, which helps at the margin while public health systems carry the target.
How this was scoredHelpful
Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Coordinated a shareholder coalition that filed a health resolution at Nestle for the 2024 annual general meeting and published an investor briefing criticising the company's treatment of infant and toddler milk products in its healthier-sales target.
Shareholders file health resolution at Nestle, ShareAction, 2024-03
Runs an investor signatory group of more than 80 institutional investors managing over 21.5 trillion US dollars that engages food and baby food companies against the Investor Expectations on Nutrition, Diets and Health, and publishes a Breast-milk Substitute Marketing Index scoring companies against the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes.
ATNi's Investors in Nutrition and Health, Access to Nutrition Initiative, 2026-07
1 campaign on record
Improve governance, product strategy including responsible marketing and labelling, lobbying and transparency on nutrition.
Result: 53 of 81 investor members managing 15 trillion US dollars took part, holding 34 meetings between July 2021 and February 2023
Companies made 56 confirmed updates to investors, 41 percent of them product improvements including nutrient profiling commitments and healthy product sales targets.
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.