Thursday, March 28, 2024

75 years of making a difference

Beatriz Imperatori, Executive Director of UNICEF Portugal

“(…) this organization is 200.000 tonne vessel with a fifteen mile turning circle – it’s an oil tanker and you are trying to drive it like a speedboat”.
Peter Adamson in “The Mad American”, Essay for the Church House Conference Center, June 1997, in Jim Grant, UNICEF visionary.

UNICEF is undoubtedly a huge agency; in keeping with its presence in 190 countries and regions and many thousands of professionals, partners, institutional and private, collective and individual donors, and governments make the United Nations Fund for Childhood what it is today.

The dimension and the scale of our presence comes with the challenge for speed and flexibility. Years of experience in responding to emergencies in every corner of the world have prepared us for responding to this Universal Pandemic. For the first time, we were called on to respond simultaneously all around the world. What was requested of us involved, beyond responding to the children, deploying all of our infrastructures and experience in the service of all of humanity irrespective of their age, nationality or situation.

Our dimension and our solidity, alongside our speedy capacity to mobilise resources, make UNICEF an unrivalled agency. This year, we commemorate our 75th anniversary and our mission has never been quite so important.

UNICEF was launched in 1946 to respond to the needs of children whose lives had been destroyed by World War II. Irrespective of the country they lived in or the role and responsibilities that this country may have had in the war, what really mattered was reaching the children at greatest risk and in greatest need. Today, just as 75 years ago, the role of UNICEF is to guarantee all of the rights, for all children, within an extraordinarily complex global context, requiring the mobilisation for another war, without ceasefires and without borders, against the Covid-19 pandemic.

“TODAY, JUST AS 75 YEARS
AGO, THE ROLE OF UNICEF
IS TO GUARANTEE ALL
OF THE RIGHTS, FOR ALL
CHILDREN.”

The generalised confinement, the closure of a significant proportion of the economy and shutting down schools, as well as limitations on access to healthcare, nutrition and protection, and prohibitions on the practice of sporting, cultural and leisure activities have had a tremendous impact on the lives of thousands of millions of children and young persons all around the world, creating new situations of hardship and worsening pre-existing differences and vulnerabilities. So that we may continue to advance and progress in terms of the rights of children, we have to unite efforts to combat extreme poverty – with drastic implications in terms of education, diet and the health of children. In this field, it is essential that we resume with determination the immunisation campaigns that have been halted over the last year and a half causing a profound impact on the prevention of avoidable diseases. In this same field, it is also fundamental we catch up with learning and get children back into the schools they left due to the pandemic and other phenomena. Throughout this period, 168 million children and young people left education around the world. The critical situation experienced today in Madagascar is an example of this. The evaluation made in 12 communities impacted by the nutritional emergency currently experienced revealed the prevalent perception (over 70% of interview respondents) of the greater exposure of children to labour, sexual exploitation and underage marriage. 72% of females interviewed express insecurity over their daily lives. Many of these situations might be prevented were the schools open and if we were able to ensure that these children remained in them. Education is the most important instrument to break the inter-generational cycle of poverty that on average can persist for over five generations.

Very often, schools are the only safe place where children may interrelate with other children and adults in trust and safety. The pandemic – and the distance learning services – highlighted the need to reinforce the empowerment of the education community in terms of its social and protection roles. UNICEF in Portugal has built up work so that education professionals are endowed with the tools and strategies for detection and intervention in situations of danger or risk. The response of the education community has been extraordinary and schools and their professionals are far more aware and able to act in defence of children and to protect their rights. The challenges are many, the needs are immense and the resources are scarce.

However, what we lack in means, we have in terms of determination, the capacity for mobilisation and enthusiasm. The legacy of UNICEF and the achievements made over these last 75 years, truly notable in terms of the evolution in the human development indicators (despite so much, really so very much, still to do), give us every confidence in a better future.

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