UN Children's Fund Has Been Big Boost To Child Survival, Outgo-
ing Chief Says
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Well, well...
Claudio Schuftan
mailto:claudio@hcmc.netnam.vn
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New York, Apr 27 2005 5:00PM
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has reduced child
mortality significantly over the past decade and has expanded
its mandate to cover protecting youngsters from exploitation,
the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the consequences of extreme poverty,
outgoing Executive Director Carol Bellamy said today.
In a farewell news conference at UN Headquarters in New York,
she summed up UNICEF's work in recent years, saying global child
mortality had dropped by 16 per cent in the last 15 years and
by 34 per cent if AIDS-devastated sub-Saharan Africa's data were
excluded.
Measles had dropped by half since 1999 and the number of chil-
dren not attending school had dropped below 100 million for the
first time in years, while more countries were taking legisla-
tive and other steps to protect children from the worst abuses
and exploitation, Ms. Bellamy said.
A UNICEF programme called Accelerated Child Survival and Devel-
opment that bundles critical life-saving services and delivers
them to the poorest, most remote, most service-starved dis-
tricts, where most child deaths occur, had decreased child
deaths in remote areas of Mali by around 20 per cent over a two-
year period, she said.
"These results are striking. And we are having them thoroughly
studied before formal publication. But I draw on these examples,
among many other exciting developments, to highlight the fact
that on the ground, UNICEF has been innovating and experimenting
with what works," she added.
She also said she believed UNICEF had played a pivotal role in
putting the exploitation of children on the map. "This is an-
other area where there is much work to be done, be it on child
soldiers, sexual abuse of children, trafficking, or child la-
bour. But I can say with certainty that governments are no
longer free to ignore these abuses as they were just 10 years
ago."
Noting UNICEF's State of the World's Children 2005" report that
told of more than a billion children being robbed of their
childhood by the triple threat of HIV/AIDS, poverty and con-
flict, however, she said, "I am the first to say that I wish we
had accomplished more for children over the past 10 years."
More work was needed to reach the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs), she said, referring to a set of proposals issued at the
UN in 2000 to reduce a host of socio-economic ills, including
extreme poverty, by at least half by 2015.
"It is my most central conviction from 10 years at UNICEF that
nothing will turn the tide against poverty the way that educa-
tion can, especially for girls," Ms. Bellamy said. "There is no
more sure an investment for nations than investment in a quality
basic education for all boys and girls. With girls especially,
the returns, with respect to the next generation of children,
are striking."
Despite the continuing problems, it was a testament to the
Fund's pragmatic optimism that its 10,000 staffers in 158 coun-
tries were helping to look for solutions to the local and inter-
national problems of children every day, she said.
UNICEF "was created with hope and optimism and is continually
renewed by the hope and optimism that children bring into the
world," she added.
The agency said, in a release on her departure, that Ms. Bellamy
made restoring schooling during emergencies a hallmark of UNI-
CEF's work, "recognizing that getting children back into a
learning environment as soon as possible allows children to be
children again and gives them a friendly space to escape from
the hardship and chaos they have endured."
A series of UNICEF news releases covering earthquakes and other
natural disasters, as well as peacekeeping and peacebuilding
situations, had told of schools installed in hastily cleared
buildings or quickly erected tents, as well as training in psy-
chotherapy for teachers who had to work with the traumatized
children.
Ms. Bellamy had also confronted leaders who failed to protect
children, going to Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka and Sudan to advocate
demobilizing child soldiers and meeting Taliban leaders in Af-
ghanistan about their refusal to educate girls, UNICEF said.
Ms. Bellamy leaves UNICEF to take up a post as CEO and President
of World Learning, a private, non-profit international educa-
tional organization.
Her successor at UNICEF will be Ann Veneman, most recently
United States Secretary of Agriculture.