Lessons Learned from Initiating Infant and Young Child Feeding in Emergencies Programming for the Ukraine Response in 2022

The Russian Federation’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 resulted in the largest and fastest displacement of people in Europe since World War II. Most of those displaced were women and children and as such, the need for urgent infant and young child feeding in emergencies (IYCF-E) support was clear. This informal study focused on capturing technical lessons learned during preparedness and the initial six months of the response in Ukraine (February – August 2022), in particular exploring in-country perspectives of global and regional technical IYCF-E support. It draws on the experiences of 35 individuals directly involved in the early response, where 69 percent were Ukrainian nationals.