PHA-Exchange> UN CHILDREN'S FUND HAS BEEN BIG BOOST TO CHILD SURVIVAL, OUTGOING CHIEF SAYS

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From: "Vern Weitzel" <vern.weitzel at undp.org>

Well, well...
Claudio

UN CHILDREN'S FUND HAS BEEN BIG BOOST TO CHILD SURVIVAL, OUTGOING CHIEF SAYS
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  <"http://www.unicef.org/media/media_26201.html">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 children not
attending school had dropped
below 100 million for the first time in years, while more countries were
taking legislative and
other steps to protect children from the worst abuses and exploitation, Ms.
Bellamy said.

A <"http://www.unicef.org/">UNICEF programme called Accelerated Child
Survival and Development that
bundles critical life-saving services and delivers them to the poorest, most
remote, most
service-starved districts, 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 another area where there is much work to be done, be it
on child soldiers,
sexual abuse of children, trafficking, or child labour. 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
"<"http://www.unicef.org/publications/index_24432.html">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 conflict, 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 education 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 countries were helping to look for solutions to the local
and international 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 UNICEF'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 psychotherapy 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 Afghanistan
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 educational organization.

Her successor at UNICEF will be Ann Veneman, most recently United States
Secretary of Agriculture.