Tämä analyysi tutkii Suomen virallisen kehitysavun kohdistumista lapsille. Analyysi on englanniksi.
Analyysi on toteutettu UNICEFin toimeksiannosta OECD:n kehitysapukomitean (DAC) CRS-aineiston vuosien 2014–2024 pohjalta. Tutkimuksessa käytettiin UNICEFin lapsivaikutteisen kehitysavun menetelmää, jolla tunnistetaan hankkeet ja rahoitus, joiden tarkoituksena on tukea lapsia tai edistää lasten oikeuksia.
Finland’s Development and Humanitarian Financing: A Child-Focused Perspective
A new UNICEF analysis of Finland’s official development assistance (ODA) shows that children continue to benefit from Finnish development cooperation, particularly through investments in education, health, humanitarian action, water and sanitation, and multilateral organizations. At the same time, the study highlights a changing aid landscape: overall Finnish ODA has declined in recent years, and funding for some of the sectors most closely linked to children's wellbeing has decreased.
The analysis is based on data from the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) Creditor Reporting System and was commissioned by UNICEF as part of a broader initiative examining child-focused aid among donor countries. The study applies a common methodology developed for UNICEF to estimate how much development assistance explicitly targets children and children's rights. It covers Finnish aid between 2014 and 2024 and includes both bilateral assistance and Finland’s contributions to multilateral organizations.
How the study was conducted
The study defines “child-focused ODA” as development assistance where there is clear donor intent to support children or child rights. Funding was classified as child-focused based on OECD reporting data, including sector classifications, policy markers, channels of delivery, references to child-related Sustainable Development Goal targets, and child-related terminology in project descriptions.
The analysis uses project-level OECD DAC data on aid disbursements from 2014 to 2024 and reports all figures in constant 2023 US dollars. In addition to bilateral aid, the study estimates the child-focused share of Finland’s core contributions to multilateral organizations using an established imputed multilateral methodology.
Finland’s overall aid budget has declined
Finland’s aid budget has contracted in recent years. According to preliminary OECD data, Finland provided approximately USD 1.33 billion in ODA in 2025, equal to 0.44 per cent of gross national income. Finland’s ODA has now declined for three consecutive years, and total aid spending in 2025 was around 23 per cent lower than its peak level in 2022.
The current government’s development policy approach, introduced in 2023, includes plans to reduce ODA by approximately EUR 3 billion during 2024-2027. The strategy places stronger emphasis on foreign and security policy interests, trade, economic relations and strategic partnerships, while continuing to prioritize women and girls, education and climate action.
Although children's rights are not explicitly identified as a strategic priority in Finland’s development cooperation framework, children are recognized as a particularly vulnerable group in humanitarian crises, and education remains one of Finland’s key development priorities.
Child-focused aid has remained relatively resilient
Despite reductions in overall aid spending, support for children has remained comparatively resilient.
The study estimates that Finland provided USD 289 million in child-focused ODA in 2024. While this was slightly below the 2023 peak of USD 313 million, it represented a higher share of Finland’s overall aid portfolio than a decade earlier.
Child-focused ODA accounted for 21 per cent of Finland’s total ODA in 2024, compared with 17 per cent in 2014. However, the increase in proportion should be interpreted carefully. The analysis finds that the higher share reflects not only child-focused investments but also declines in overall ODA spending. In absolute terms, child-focused aid grew by only around 4 per cent over the decade.
The largest fluctuation occurred after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, when Finland’s aid budget expanded substantially due to increased in-donor refugee costs. This caused child-focused aid to represent a smaller proportion of total ODA in 2022, even though actual spending on children remained relatively stable.
Education and health remain highly child-focused
The analysis identifies education and health as the sectors most strongly focused on children.
In 2024, 86 per cent of Finland’s education aid and 85 per cent of health aid qualified as child-focused. These sectors consistently demonstrated the strongest links to children throughout the review period.
However, the study also finds concerning downward trends in both sectors.
Child-focused education funding reached a high point of USD 97 million in 2021 before declining by 57 per cent by 2024. Health spending has also fallen significantly over the longer term and decreased again after temporary increases associated with the COVID-19 response.
The report notes that while education remains a stated Finnish development priority, declining investments in education and health may weaken support for areas that are fundamental to children's wellbeing and long-term development.
Humanitarian funding
The study identifies humanitarian assistance as one of several sectors with a strong child-focused component, alongside governance, banking and business initiatives, water and sanitation, and social services. Child-focused humanitarian funding includes support delivered through multilateral organizations and programmes addressing the needs of vulnerable children and families affected by crises.
The report also highlights that Finland’s official humanitarian policies explicitly recognize children as a vulnerable population requiring special protection during emergencies.
In addition, in-donor refugee costs accounted for a notable share of child-focused spending in recent years. In 2024, approximately USD 62 million, or 22 per cent of Finland’s child-focused ODA, was recorded through spending related to refugees hosted in Finland.
Child-focused aid is concentrated in the poorest countries
The geographical distribution of child-focused aid differs somewhat from Finland’s overall aid portfolio.
Nearly half of Finland’s child-focused bilateral aid directed to specific countries was allocated to low-income countries in 2024, compared with 38 per cent of other aid spending.
Sub-Saharan Africa remained the largest destination for child-focused funding, while South and Central Asia also received significant support. Among individual countries, Ethiopia, Nepal and Kenya were the largest recipients of child-focused bilateral assistance in 2024, while Somalia received the highest amount over the entire 2014-2024 period.
Strong support for the multilateral system
One of the clearest findings concerns Finland’s commitment to multilateral cooperation.
In 2025, 44 per cent of Finland’s ODA was provided as core contributions to multilateral organizations, making Finland a strong supporter of the multilateral system.
However, the study finds that the child-focused share of Finland’s multilateral assistance has declined. Imputed child-focused multilateral ODA fell from 14 per cent of core multilateral contributions in 2014 to 11 per cent in 2024. In volume terms, child-focused multilateral funding declined from approximately USD 95 million to USD 70 million over the same period.
United Nations organizations account for the largest share of Finland’s child-focused multilateral funding. According to the study’s methodology, UN agencies represented 45 per cent of child-focused multilateral ODA over the review period. In 2024, UNFPA, UNICEF, UNRWA and the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) were among the largest recipients of Finland’s child-focused core multilateral contributions.
Looking ahead
The report concludes that Finland has a strong record of investing in children through development cooperation but warns that recent policy and budget changes could pose risks to future child-focused spending.
While child-focused aid has so far been somewhat protected from wider reductions in development cooperation, funding for education and health has fallen, and children's rights are not explicitly embedded in Finland’s broader development strategy. The study suggests that maintaining investments in children, strengthening child-focused financing through multilateral institutions, and integrating children’s rights more systematically across development sectors will be important if Finland is to sustain its longstanding contribution to child wellbeing globally.
Methodology
This analysis was commissioned by UNICEF and conducted using OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) Creditor Reporting System (CRS) data covering the period 2014–2024. The study applies UNICEF’s child-focused ODA methodology, which identifies aid activities that intentionally support children or advance children’s rights.
Child-focused aid was estimated using project-level information, including sector classifications, policy markers, delivery channels, references to child-related Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets, and child-related terminology in project descriptions. The analysis covers both Finland’s bilateral aid and the estimated child-focused share of Finland’s core contributions to multilateral organizations. All financial data are presented in constant 2023 US dollars.
Source: UNICEF Child-Focused ODA Profile: Finland (2026).
