At the 2026 Paris Peace Forum Child Summit in Paris, Danone signed the Children First Declaration and joined the Action Hub for Children as a founding partner, helping turn a shared ambition for child wellbeing into concrete action. Its first contribution to the Hub is Iron Up! a program launched by Danone in 2025 addressing iron deficiency anemia through awareness, earlier screening and partnerships.

On 10 and 11 November, the Paris Peace Forum's Child Summit brought together governments, international organizations, philanthropies, civil society and business leaders around one urgent ambition: to put children back at the heart of global policy and investment.

The timing matters. Almost five million children still die before their fifth birthday, and two thirds of child-related Sustainable Development Goal targets are off track. With conflict, climate shocks and constrained public resources putting growing pressure on children, the Summit is built on a simple conviction: investing early in children's health and development creates lasting benefits for societies. As the last G7-labelled event of France's G7 presidency, it is also a rare moment of common ground in a fragmented world.

For Danone, this ambition goes to the heart of our mission to bring health through food to as many people as possible, and reflects our long-standing expertise in nutrition and maternal and child health.

But no single actor can address these challenges alone. Progress depends on governments, health systems, international organizations, NGOs, philanthropies and businesses working together, each bringing their own expertise and capabilities.

This is why Danone signed the Children First Declaration, which sets out a shared ambition to achieve tangible results by 2045 across five priority areas for children’s wellbeing. Danone is a cosignatory alongside more than 50 countries, international organizations, and many other partners and members of the Action Hub for Children. Led by the Paris Peace Forum, the Hub is designed to bring partners together around practical solutions that can reach more children and families.

That spirit of collaboration is built into the Action Hub itself. More than a pledge platform, it is a partnership ecosystem that will initially focus on three areas:

• Maternal and child health and nutrition, expanding the reach of proven solutions.
• Education and technology, ensuring digital tools and AI support children's learning and safety.
• Family wellbeing and living conditions, including poverty, exploitation and child labor.

Companies will contribute not only funding, but also expertise and capabilities. The Hub will run from 2026 to 2029, with progress reviewed each year at the Paris Peace Forum, so that collaboration continues well beyond the Summit. 

Nutrition is where Danone can make a distinctive contribution. At the Summit, Danone is shining a light on iron deficiency anemia, which affects close to four in ten children aged 6 months to 5 years, yet often goes undetected because most children are never tested.

Isabelle Esser, Danone's Chief Research, Innovation, Quality and Food Safety Officer, spoke in the session “Digital Innovations for Better Child Health and Nutrition,” on how awareness, screening, technology and partnerships can enable earlier action. 

Putting this vision into practice, Iron Up! is Danone's first contribution to the Action Hub. The initiative addresses a widespread yet often invisible challenge: iron deficiency anemia. In 2025, more than 3.1 million screenings were carried out across more than 15 countries, and Danone has committed to supporting 14 million screenings by 2030.

At the Summit, Danone's stand in the Solutions Village focused on raising awareness of iron deficiency anemia and the importance of earlier screening, offering visitors a first look at the IronUp! program ahead of IDA Day on 26 November. It illustrated the Action Hub approach: combining nutrition expertise, technology and partnerships to deliver practical solutions at scale.

Beyond the Solutions Village, Danone is taking part at the highest level of the Summit.

At the closed-door session "Children's Lives are Everyone's Business: Launch of the Action Hub for Children", Antoine de Saint-Affrique delivered a keynote on what companies can bring to build scalable partnerships.

Later in the afternoon, Antoine de Saint-Affrique joined the Child Summit's high-level plenary, "Children First: A Global Commitment to Child Wellbeing", where the Declaration is endorsed. He spoke on the panel "Reaching Every Child: Survival, Health and Protection", alongside leaders from Gavi the Vaccine Alliance, Sanofi and the United Nations.

Taken together, from signing the Children First Declaration to co-founding the Action Hub and advancing action on iron deficiency anemia, Danone's engagement reflects one conviction: lasting progress for children depends on collective action, with each partner bringing its expertise to help solutions reach more children and families.