PHA-Exchange> CAMPAIGN TO DEFEND UNICEF'S MISSION TO DEFEND CHILDREN!

[Tawnia Queen]

Dear Friends,

The campaign against the appointment of Ms. Ann Veneman as Executive 
Director of UNICEF has been successful so far with a fantastic number of 
individuals and organizations signing on in solidarity.  I have pasted the 
letter of concern below.  The website has this letter in English and 
Spanish and a page for you to sign on and join the campaign.  Visit the 
website at www.saveunicef.org and pass this onto your networks.

For more information, contact: phm at hesperian.org



A letter of concern from the People's Health Movement regarding the 
appointment of Ms. Ann Veneman as Executive Director of UNICEF, effective 
May 2005.


The People's Health Movement (PHM) was alarmed to learn of the appointment 
of Ms. Ann Veneman, former Secretary of the United States Department of 
Agriculture (USDA), as the new Executive Director of UNICEF. It is 
unfortunate that the process of appointing an Executive Director for UNICEF 
is shrouded in secrecy, and allows no mechanism for individuals or NGOs 
active around issues of children's welfare, health and rights to 
participate. Neither is there a forum for the various candidates to make 
known their goals or plans for the agency prior to the announcement of the 
appointment.

Apparently the appointment process allows the United States government the 
lion's share of decision-making in the choice of Executive Director of 
UNICEF. This in itself should be a cause for debate among all observers. As 
is well-known, the United States and Somalia are the only two countries 
which have refused to join the 189 other governments of the world as 
signatories of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Given the US 
practice of de-funding UN agencies whose direction it disapproves (UNESCO, 
UNFPA, WHO, etc.), we can only imagine the pressures brought to bear on the 
Secretary General to name Ms. Veneman.

In the absence of a transparent, informative process to select an Executive 
Director, the international health community is forced to evaluate Ms. 
Veneman's suitability to lead UNICEF based on her past performance on 
issues affecting children's health. After reviewing the publicly available 
information, the People's Health Movement believes it would be 
unconscionable to quietly stand by while Ms. Veneman is appointed steward 
of the health and well-being of the most vulnerable among us: children.

Ms. Veneman's training and experience as a corporate lawyer for 
agribusiness do not qualify her for the substantial task of leading the 
agency most responsible for the rights of children worldwide. There is no 
evidence in her tenure as US Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of the 
California Department of Food and Agriculture, or Deputy Undersecretary for 
International Affairs of the USDA of her interest in the world's children 
or their health and well-being. Indeed, her performance in these positions 
has been characterized by the elevation of corporate profit above people's 
right to food (UN Declaration of Human Rights, article 25). Such a 
philosophy and practice would reverse almost six decades of UNICEF's proud 
humanitarian history and prove disastrous for the world's children.

One of the greatest disasters for children of the past decade has been the 
US sanctions against Iraq, and the subsequent invasion and occupation of 
that country. The previous Director of UNICEF, Ms. Bellamy, called for an 
end to the sanctions responsible for the deaths of an estimated 500,000 
children. Ms. Veneman has made no similar expressions of concern. Indeed, 
as US Secretary of Agriculture, in 2003 she named Mr. Daniel Amstutz to 
head Iraq's agricultural reconstruction process. As Oxfam's former policy 
director Kevin Watkins stated, "Putting Dan Amstutz in charge of 
agricultural reconstruction in Iraq is like putting Saddam Hussein in the 
chair of a human rights commission. This guy is uniquely well placed to 
advance the commercial interests of American grain companies and bust open 
the Iraqi market, but singularly ill equipped to lead a reconstruction 
effort in a developing country."  This appointment by Ms. Veneman doesn't 
bode well for the children of Iraq, nor does it evidence concern for them 
on the part of the next Executive Director of UNICEF.

As one of the negotiators of the North American Free Trade Agreement 
(NAFTA), Ms. Veneman helped write the rules that have plunged millions of 
Mexican children into poverty. NAFTA codified the harsh neoliberal economic 
policies that have swept away laws and protections won by Mexican workers 
over decades. The US-Mexico border is characterized by harsh and worsening 
conditions of child labor in the Mexicali Valley, deplorable housing around 
factories, increased environmental contamination, and a lack of 
educational, health and sanitary infrastructure for workers and their 
families, especially young children.

Ms. Veneman's attitude toward children who work spans the border to include 
the fields and orchards of her own country. When Human Rights Watch sought 
her support for pending amendments to US legislation (Fair Labor Standards 
Act and others), then-US Secretary of Agriculture Veneman spurned their 
concerns. Apparently, the future Executive Director of UNICEF was not moved 
by the health and safety risks to child farm workers, including routine 
pesticide exposures, inadequate access to sanitation and drinking water, 
hazardous conditions causing work-related illnesses and injuries, low wages 
and long hours, the effects of farm work on education, and special risks to 
girls, including sexual harassment.

Ms. Veneman's record in respecting the rights of ethnic minorities in the 
United States is also poor. When African American farmers won a judgment 
against the US Department of Agriculture for unfair treatment in the 
provision of subsidies and loans, more than US$12 million was spent by the 
USDA to undermine this historic civil rights case. Under Ms. Veneman's 
leadership, the USDA paid out less than 25% of the funds set aside for the 
Black farmers. The USDA has never accepted that its policies were racist, 
has never apologized, and continues to fight the farmers. Racist policies 
should not be tolerated in any government, and could wreak havoc in an 
international setting like the United Nations.

Policies championed by Ms. Veneman around protecting public health, 
especially in regard to the "mad cow disease" (bovine spongiform 
encephalopathy) outbreak, have been weak. Instead of pursuing an approach 
prioritizing health based on the precautionary principle, USDA activity 
centered on minimizing financial losses to the cattle raising and meat 
packing industries. Ms. Veneman assured the population that there was no 
problem with beef when only very limited testing was carried out, and 
resisted labeling meat to identify country of origin. In fact, the USDA 
refused to permit meatpackers to test cows in order to meet high 
international export standards, afraid that US consumers would also demand 
stricter guarantees of protection. Given another of the USDA's roles --as a 
large purchaser of beef for school lunch programs-- this antipathy to 
verifying the integrity of the nation's beef supply evidences replacing 
concern for the health of children with concern for the health of beef 
industry profits.

Perhaps Ms. Veneman's most noteworthy support of agribusiness over people's 
health concerns is her unequivocal support for genetically modified foods 
and the biotechnology industry. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Ms. 
Veneman declared at an UN FAO conference that biotechnology "will 
reinvigorate productivity growth in food and agriculture production and 
make agriculture more environmentally sustainable."  Formerly a corporate 
director of Calgene, producer of the first commercially marketed GMO 
tomato, Ms. Veneman continued the US Department of Agriculture's policy of 
approving field releases of GMOs at almost 40,000 sites between 1987 and 
2002, rejecting only 3.5 % of applications. Her handling of the two GMO 
"crises" occurring during her tenure (those of Starlink and ProdiGene corn) 
resulted in US$20 million and US$3.5 million payouts respectively to the 
corporate sector, but in no labeling requirements or protections for 
consumers. In a move that foreshadows an opposition to a diversity of 
stakeholder viewpoints in UNICEF, the Advisory Committee on Biotechnology, 
named by Ms. Veneman in 2003, purposefully excluded key anti-biotech 
farmers' organizations. Ms. Veneman's comments pressuring the European 
Union to drop its ban on GM food imports and calling African countries 
"disgraceful" for refusing non-processed GM food donations have been widely 
reported. Such comments display an inability to recognize the validity of 
cultural concerns, which is a central qualification for delicate 
international posts like the direction of UNICEF.

When the US Department of Agriculture was founded in the mid-19th century, 
President Abraham Lincoln called it the "People's Department" because it 
served the approximately one half of the population engaged in agricultural 
work. 150 years later, a small fraction of Americans are engaged in farm 
work and the USDA mostly represents corporate interests. The Veneman period 
in that US government agency has served only to intensify corporate 
control. In an agency like UNICEF, where its constituency of children has a 
limited ability to represent themselves, it is urgent that those charged to 
speak for children and represent their interests have a history that 
qualifies them to do so.

We do not wish to unfairly assert that Ms. Veneman's future in UNICEF can 
be known by simply reviewing her history in agriculture. However, in one of 
her only reported post- nomination comments regarding her new post, Ms. 
Veneman asserted in a press conference that reproductive health and 
education were "not relevant to the missions of UNICEF."  As all 
experienced in child health and welfare know, a mother's access to 
reproductive health and education including child spacing are in fact 
central determinants of child health. This inauspicious introduction to a 
new administration at UNICEF raises alarm bells for those dedicated to 
child welfare.

In the coming period, UNICEF will be facing challenges in a number of areas 
which demand strong advocacy for children and their rights. There are 
enormous differences between an approach that seeks to maximize corporate 
profit and one that maximizes child health and well-being regarding:

* children's rights to food, housing, education, healthcare and childhood 
itself;

* the marketing of breastmilk substitutes;

* women's access to reproductive health and child spacing information and 
services;

* access to ARVs and other pharmaceuticals for HIV+ children and their 
families;

* the provision of untested and insufficiently tested GMO foods, 
supplements and

    medicines to children;

* the effects of neoliberal "free" trade policies on families and childhood;

* water privatization and access, and diarrheal disease;

* industrial contamination, and birth defects and disabilities;

and many others.

In a world where 11 million children under the age of 5 die each year, most 
from a lack of simple medicines, clean water, safe environments, and 
adequate nutrition, advocacy for children means demanding corporate and 
government accountability and dedication to resolve those problems. In a 
world in which health experts estimate that 6 million of those children 
could be saved by low-tech interventions costing about $7.5 billion (less 
than 2 percent of the annual US military budget), advocacy for children 
means opposing the harmful and wasteful expansion of military spending and 
the use of military force to solve problems.

As advocates for children, we are compelled to voice our strong concerns 
about the appointment of Ms. Ann Veneman as Executive Director of UNICEF. 
The People's Health Movement and NGOs with a long history of promotion of 
child welfare and children's rights will not permit the integrity of the 
most respected international body devoted to the welfare of the world's 
children to be jeopardized. While we look forward to a close and productive 
engagement with the new leadership of UNICEF, and continued collaboration 
with the dedicated staff of local UNICEF offices, we will not hesitate to 
actively oppose the implementation of policies that do not work to 
eliminate the 30,000 daily preventable child deaths and other threats to 
child welfare.

As advocates for children, we also insist that the Secretary General 
replace current practice, which rewards powerful countries with the ability 
to make political appointments to important posts, with a transparent and 
participatory process that guarantees a professional, committed and 
competent leadership for UNICEF and other agencies. The present process 
undermines democracy, sullies the image of the UN, and further threatens 
the already precarious existence of the majority of the world's citizens.

Signed:


Ravi Narayan, Coordinator, Global Secretariat, People's Health Movement (PHM)





30,000 children will die in the next 24 hours from preventable diseases.
Click www.TheMillionSignatureCampaign.org , to join a campaign that demands
HEALTH FOR ALL NOW !


Tawnia Queen
International Publications Associate
Hesperian Foundation -- Publishing for Community Health and Empowerment
1919 Addison Street, #304
Berkeley, CA 94704 USA
Phone: 510-845-1447, ext. 219   Fax: 510-845-9141
E-mail: tawnia at hesperian.org    http://www.hesperian.org
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