Protecting the future – Glass gains unique insight into the admirable work of UNICEF and learns how apathy is today’s biggest threat
Since its creation by the United Nations General Assembly in 1946, with the aim of providing food, clothing and health care to the millions of children facing famine and disease in the wake of World War II, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has championed the protection of the rights of children and young people worldwide. Operating to date in 190 countries, it is the largest global organisation specialising specifically in aiding disadvantaged young people from birth to adolescence.
Relying wholly on voluntary donations to subsidise their work, UNICEF works with governments, communities and families not only to provide aid in times of emergencies, but to ensure that children are healthy, educated and able to reach their full potential. UNICEF UK’s Executive Director David Bull, speaks to Glass about the organisation’s campaigns, policies and achievements, and ways in which the public can help make a positive difference in the lives of children.
Can you tell us more about the UNICEF ‘Put it Right’ campaign? What progress have you been able to see in one year?
The Put it Right campaign was launched in February last year, and was an attempt to be much clearer with the public and our supporters about all the important work that UNICEF does and how we do it – also, what is special and unique about us and our approach to working for children – in the hope that we would be able to deeply engage more audiences and get their support in a way which made them feel like they were going to be lifelong partners – that it’s not just a one off.
At the root it is saying something very simple which we all know, which is that there are things about the ways in which children are living around the world that are fundamentally wrong. If you know this, then you think, “How in the 21st century is it possible that children still have to scavenge on rubbish dumps, live on the streets, drink dirty water that threatens their health every day, and lose their parents to AIDS when there are treatments available?”
Those things are wrong, and are infringements of the basic entitlements to a childhood with health and education which we all believe in – but maybe what people don’t always feel in their hearts is that it’s possible to change this and that they can be a part of that change.
That’s what we’re trying to get across with Put it Right. We can’t put it right on our own, we need you, and we can be the channel. Working together we can make the change happen so that not only one child is taken off the street or rubbish dump, but all children who are in that situation can benefit from this change. This is something that is a little bit different from the way most charities are perhaps communicating with their supporters.
How does it differ from usual UNICEF activity?
I think what has changed a little bit over the last year or so is an increase in focus on equity, which has been led by our new Executive Director Tony Lake in New York. He’s been collecting real evidence and saying that if you focus on the most marginalised, vulnerable and the most left out, then you will actually achieve more for all the children than if you “pick the lowest fruit”.
By the time you get to the hardest-to-reach, you have to put systems in place that will help benefit everyone. I think equity is something we’re becoming completely aware about, and that has an impact on whole societies and the wellbeing of children within those societies. So we want to make society more equitable based on the fact that children’s rights are for all children.
We are putting a lot of effort into identifying some examples of the kinds of programmes which illustrate that approach very well. As part of our communication, we can focus on those programmes and those illustrations, to get people’s financial support which we need for those particular activities.
You are currently active in 190 countries. With so many countries in need at any one time, how do you choose which country to aid, or more specifically, where within that country to target?
UNICEF is for all children everywhere. The Convention on the Rights of the Child defines an entitlement for all children everywhere. It doesn’t matter where you live, or who you are, you still have those rights and UNICEF wants to make a difference for you if you’re a child and not getting what you should. However, we don’t have the resources to do everything for every child ourselves, so we have to do programmes that get leverage; each programme has to be influencing the government and other institutions to do the right thing.
So we have money which is given to UNICEF by very kind and wonderful people without any restrictions. We then use a formula to target that money at the children who need it most, and that’s based on allocating funds to countries based on the child population rate, the unified mortality rate, wealth or poverty in a country and income per head. A total of 60 per cent of the money then goes to the least developed countries based on those criteria.
Every country has to have enough money to have a core programme, so we’re not leaving any country out. Then within each country we are trying increasingly to do an analysis of the rights children should have. That is, how these countries are doing in respect of each of those rights, who aren’t getting what they should, and why. We then see what kind of intervention we can make to ensure that those people are getting included; we’re aiming to get to the poorest, most affected and the most vulnerable children, so in the end what that means is over half of that money goes to Sub-Saharan Africa.
What has been your most difficult decision since taking this post?
There are so many difficult decisions; one example is, we know how much children need our support all over the world every day, so if someone offers you money it’s a very hard decision to say no – but sometimes we do that. A lot of companies do a great job in supporting UNICEF but we have very strict ethical criteria, and we do our very best to make sure that we are working with the best companies, who have the best reputation.
Therefore sometimes we have had to turn down offers of money, because we can see the risks attached – so that’s one kind of difficult decision. Also, a lot of the work we do to raise money is very scientific, and we don’t want to waste any of that money. We are very careful about what we spend to bring in more money, but sometimes if something is important or you have a good idea and you don’t really have the evidence yet about how effective it’s going to be, then you have to take a risk.
So that can be quite difficult. It’s always hard to decide between alternatives that are going to have enormous value, and of course you know that if you support one thing and not another, children somewhere will benefit whilst others won’t – and that’s got to be the hardest decision. This happens all the time because there are never enough resources. That helps to motivate us when we’re talking to people that can help us, and are trying to get involved.
With millions of children worldwide in dire situations, how effective is UNICEF in the face of such huge adversity? Do you ever feel discouraged?
If I was not so lucky to be doing the job that I’m doing then I would be discouraged. I would see so many wrong things happening in the world and it just makes you feel outraged and upset that children have to live the way that they are. One of the good things about Put It Right was that we identified five real children and in order to get the message across we told their stories. They illustrate the different problems that children face, and how complicated it is to help them and how challenging their lives are – but also the huge courage that they have to fight for their own future. We like to see children and young people as active participants in making the change, not just as beneficiaries or victims – they’re part of what we’re doing.
If you just saw the problem and you didn’t feel there was a solution, or there was something you could do about it, then you would feel discouraged – so I never feel discouraged because I know there is something we can do and I have the privilege of being able to do that every day. What I tell people who support or don’t yet support UNICEF is that we can give them that feeling of empowerment – they can make a difference and they don’t have to be discouraged and upset by what they see in the world – and together we can make a change.
What policies and structures have been put into place to ensure that after a child has received aid, they can continue to grow – physically and mentally? What do you feel UNICEF has achieved in the 60 years since its inception?
This is where we can give you numbers because there are a lot of statistics and a lot of facts. We are committed to the Millennium Development Goals (eight goals that all United Nations member states have agreed to achieve by 2015), and we’re making reasonable progress, but I wouldn’t say that we’re making good enough progress so there needs to be some acceleration on that.
Every day we are making a difference and we are increasing the numbers of people who are getting access to the help that they need. The number of children who die every day has gone down from 12.5 million in 1990 to 8.8 million in 2008 despite dramatic increases in population. So that’s millions of children’s lives being saved, and that’s a great achievement – although approximately 24,000 under five year olds still die every day.
A lot of UNICEF’s history has been about vaccination programmes which protect people from diseases that they would otherwise die of, and perhaps one of the greatest successes of that is Polio. We are almost at the point where we’ve eradicated Polio from the planet. There are now only four countries where Polio is a pandemic, so we’re working with hundreds rather than millions. Another one that we’ve been working on is the prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV. In countries like the UK, transmission never happens because we know what drug treatment to use and we can actually prevent it. So we now have a campaign to eliminate mother to child transmission of HIV by 2015.
The progress that’s being made already is extraordinary. I can give you some figures on it; the coverage is brilliant. Women who live in rural areas are given packs of medication that are to be taken before, during and after birth, which by itself should ensure that the child is free of HIV. UNICEF always works with other partners, but we have taken strong leadership on this. From a UK perspective there are a few things that I feel particularly proud of: one is our Rights Respecting Schools programme which is working with young people in the UK through schools to educate them about children’s rights. We’ve had an evaluation done which shows that it makes a real difference to reducing bullying, improving the relationships children have with their teachers, and even helping them to do better in terms of academic achievement in school.
We now live in a country where it doesn’t matter which political party you’re a part of: there’s general consensus that the aid budget needs to be protected, and that the poorest children in the world shouldn’t be the ones that pay the price of our deficit; and there aren’t many countries where you could say that was the case, and I feel proud that in our country that is the case. There’s all-party support for achieving the goal of 0.7 per cent of our national income being spent on Overseas Development, and that’s really a coalition of organisations that try to raise people’s awareness of how important that is.
Just before the spending review we were doing a campaign called Children Can’t Wait, which explains that when you’re growing up if you miss something important in your development, you can never get it back again. These are some of the things that we’ve been able to contribute to changing. I wouldn’t say any of them we’ve done on our own, but I think one of the things that makes UNICEF such an amazing organisation is that we do have the power to change really big things and there aren’t many organisations that have the reach, influence, reputation and credibility of the brand to make those big influences.
In times of economic hardship, how else can the public be involved in humanitarian causes besides fundraising? Is there anything people can do on an individual level?
What I’m saying throughout this is that people can make a difference, and obviously if they have money that’s important, we need the money – but also they can get involved in campaigns and can even use their social networks to spread the message. We need everybody to be talking about the importance of children and their rights, so that those children aren’t left out. We need to embed that message in everybody’s thinking, and in the policies and practices of our governments and institutions in society. That’s something that needs the hearts and minds of every individual.
by Kristal Lubin
From the Glass Archive – Issue Five – Dreams