International Agency & Global Governance - UNICEF - Case Study Example

Running Head: International Agency & Global Governance International Agency & Global Governance [Institute’s International Agency & Global Governance The Second World War caused enough damage and destruction on this planet to make the humans understand the effects of war. In fact, the destruction was horrible that there has not been a World war after that. However, in the year 1945, when the war seems to have ended, there had been enough devastation to human lives, quality of life, and living standards of people living in the concerned countries (Zizzamia, 1987, pp. 41-45). With the end of war many children and women had closed their eyes forever as well and the rest were about to join them if they would have continued to live in the same inhuman conditions. In fact, the children were at the highest risk and needed food, clothing, shelter, treatment as urgently as possible. It was then that United Nations international Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) came on to the scene and took the charge to solve the problems of the children living in European countries affected by war. During the period of 1946-1950, UNICEF had spent 112 million US dollars for improving the conditions of affected children (Zizzamia, 1987, pp. 41-45). The efforts include providing clothes to more than five million children, providing daily meal to millions of kids, rebuilding hospitals, and milk distribution centers and vaccinating over eight million small children against the deadly disease of tuberculosis. Without any doubts, the role of UNICEF was beyond expectations and worth appreciating (Haxton & UNICEF, 1988, pp. 20-28). However, it did not took them long to realize and understand that they would now have to shift their focus from short term and day to day management to long terms sustainable plans. Therefore, during the era of 1950-1960, UNICEF, while sticking to their job of providing day-to-day and emergency relief, also worked on conducting comprehensive awareness campaigns regarding various diseases like tuberculosis, malaria, flu, fever and other common diseases (UNICEF, 2005, pp. 4-8). Moreover, UNICEF also put its energy in educating and training parents, especially mothers, for taking care of their children more efficiently. In addition, UNICEF was smart enough to bring the governments and administration into this circle as well by actually helping them in producing low cost high nutritional food (especially rich in proteins), at the same time encouraged and educated people to use it. They also touch topics like sanitation, pure drinking water, cleaning and eating habits during their education and training programs thus making life a bit better for the victims of ruthless aggression during the war (Cash, Keusch, Lamstein & UNICEF, 1987, pp. 36-39). Very important to note here is that UNICEF was actually performing the functions of government since this is the job of government to provide its citizens with basic provisions and raise their standards of living (Suen, 2002, pp. 14-15). However, we know that the governments of that time were just not in a condition to do the same so while the government was trying to achieve self-sustainability and some momentum, UNICEF was sharing its burden and serving humanity in its true sense. The expenses of UNICEF for this period were more than 150 million US dollars (UNICEF, 2002, pp. 3-4). Efforts of more than 14 years from UNICEF had now children of these countries very much out of the crisis. Now, UNICEF had broaden its goal and had begun seeing children as the future economic agents and output producers for their country. Therefore, these children needed ample training, education and have to have enough skills to stimulate the economic activity in their country. Therefore, UNICEF then spent a big chunk of its expenditures for providing assistance to educational institutions, teacher training and improving the quality of these institutions (Suen, 2002, pp. 14-15). In fact, UNICEF was able to reform the curriculum, the teaching system, methods and their research and training brought some healthy change in the system, and the beneficiaries were the children. This had cost UNICEF more than 300 million US dollars (UNICEF, 2002, pp. 3-4). More importantly, since then, UNICEF had seemed to understand their irrevocable importance. They had understood the fact that they were, and still are, the only organization of its kind, in terms of size, scope, and operations, which deals with youth. Since youth are the future leaders of the country, therefore they have the power to decide, change, write, and influence the future state of the country. Due to this fact, UNICEF remains one of the most important organization working under the umbrella of the United Nations (UNICEF, 2007, pp. 62-74). Today, UNICEF is an organization employing more than 7000 people whom one common goal of protecting the rights of children all over the world. It currently serving in more than 158 countries all over the world and has national committees in more than 37 countries. Moreover, UNICEF has more than 300 artists, athletes, celebrities, musicians, actors and other starts who support, contribute, promote and represent the organization and help in raising funds. In addition, representatives from 36 different countries form the executive board for UNICEF. It is important here to understand that the presence of UNICEF in more than 158 countries does not mean that it is working alone there, instead UNICEF strongly believes in partnerships. It targets governments, ministers, mayors and other authorities as their first choice for forming partnerships and quite understandably, this is the best choice as well. It then uses other NGO’s, youth platforms and influential world leaders as other options for forming partnerships (UNICEF, 2007, pp. 62-74). Looking at the official “brief overview of UNICEF’s activities” provided by UNICEF, presents an even better picture of their goals, role, operations and tasks. All their tasks seem to be diverging and focusing on two aspects of a child’s life and those are health and education (Suen, pp. 26-7, 2003). UNICEF believes that every child has to right to get proper health care facilities (WHO & UNICEF, 2003, pp. 44-47). Moreover, UNICEF also upholds the view that there is no possible justification for exposing any child to violence, abuse, and exploitation (UNICEF, pp. 4-8, 2005). Moreover, the only disease that UNICEF has added and focused on in their overview of activities is HIV and AIDS and UNICEF strives to keep children safe from it. Even if any child has caught HIV or AIDS, then UNICEF believes the he or she still has all the right to live his or her life with all the dignity and respect in the society (Gillespie, McLachlan, Shrimpton, World Bank & UNICEF, 2003, pp. 39-46). Another very interesting goal of UNICEF is girl’s education. Despite of writing it as education for all children, UNICEF shows that it has some serious considerations and focus on girl’s education (UNICEF, 2005, pp. 4-8). Moreover, UNICEF has strong reasons for this so-called gender discrimination. Despite the fact that UNICEF actually started with working in the third world countries but today UNICEF has its operations mainly in the third world countries or developing countries where the literacy rate is very low (Suen, 2003, pp. 26-27). The problem is that in majority of these societies men remain at the top no matter what the situation is. In fact, there are many areas where girls do not get any education at all. Mostly there are no girls’ schools in these areas, and even if there were one, then the local people would not allow it to run and even if it continues its operations in some way or the other, the family does not allow their girls to go there (Zahr, Wardlaw, Hill, WHO, UNICEF, 2004, pp. 5-7). Even if some extreme unusual any girl manages to go to a school, she would be “called-off” after the fifth standard education because they think that this much education is a little more than enough for girls (Maddocks, 2004, pp. 14-19). UNICEF seems to understand that the effects of these insensible beliefs are traditions are extremely disastrous in both long run and short term. There is a famous quotation that “mothers are the first school of their children.” Imagine of a school, which is uneducated, itself. One cannot expect well-disciplined, well-educated, socially and morally responsible children from uneducated mothers. In fact, in a macro sense, this makes the upcoming breed, a liability for its society (Maddocks, 2004, pp. 14-19) (UNICEF & Zouev, 1999, pp. 84-87). Secondly, since we are talking about the under developed nations, so quite understandably, they have very low incomes. Low incomes coupled with rising inflation and lower wages, which are common in these countries, live these families with almost nothing to feed themselves (Carland & Gihring, 2003, pp. 84-86). If the same happens in a country having high literacy rate of women, the homemakers have the option of transforming into working women so that they can also contribute something to the total income of the family thus making life easier (Gillespie, McLachlan, Shrimpton, World Bank & UNICEF, 2003, pp. 39-46). Nevertheless, for the people living in communities where women education is discouraged, this option just does not exist. The role of UNICEF feels even more important after looking at the following data presented by UNICEF itself. More than 30000 children die every day all over the world and more importantly, the diseases from which they die off are very much preventable and curable (Connolly, 2009, pp. 93-96). In fact, four million children die all over the globe during the first month of their life. More than 30 percent of the children in developing are so unlucky that they have to manage their lives with an income of less than one US dollar per day (Reyes & Jacobs, 2006, pp. 18-21). Only in Sub-Saharan Africa, more than two million children under the age level of fifteen years are living HIV and AIDS. Moreover, malaria on an average is killing more than three thousand children every day in the same part of the world. Two thirds of the world illiterates are women and this ratio would increase since only 76 percent of the girls complete their primary education as compared to the 86 percent boys (Volberg, 2008, pp. 34-38). There is a 0.025 percent chance that a woman in an industrialized would die due during pregnancy or childbirth; however, there is a 6.25 percent chance of the same for a women living in the Sub-Saharan Africa (Connolly, 2009, pp. 93-96). According to a rough estimate, “more than 2 million children witness sexual exploitation by prostitution or pornography, 1.2 million are trafficked and 246 million witness exploitation through child labor” (Volberg, 2008, pp. 34-38). Moreover, countless girls in Africa and South Asia go through the disastrous processes of early marriages making their rest of the life miserable. In addition, 31 percent of all children in developing countries are unlucky to have no toilet facilities. Moreover, 20 percent of these children would have to walk the distance of more than 20 minutes, just for having access to water and more importantly, still that water would be unsafe and unhealthy. However, the other side of the picture has something good to show. UNICEF’s income in the year 2004 was around 1.7 billion, which has now doubled during all these years (Epstein & Limage, 2008, pp. 17-19) (UNICEF, 2004, pp. 13-19). This indicates that this organization has been successful in catching the attention of investors and donors. Moreover, the achievement of UNICEF and contribution to the global governance of youth has been phenomenal for the more than the past six decades. Its transformation from an emergency fund for European countries to an international children organization is something sensational. More importantly, it has the mandate of one of the most important issues related to children and that are regarding their health and education. UNICEF has worked extremely hard in order to make sure that more and more children go to school, receive proper health care facilities, get all their rights, are safe from sexual or physical abuse, even in those countries which are remote areas of the world. Moreover, it has taught and trained more mothers regarding children care than any other NGO on this planet. Most importantly, UNICEF seems to have a long-term vision and the next breed of humans would be a witness of it. However, despite the fact that its performance has been sensational there is still a lot of work for UNICEF to do. Its time for UNICEF to answer the charges of discrimination against Palestinian kids by actually diverting a lot of their energy to that part of the world (Epstein & Limage, 2008, pp. 17-19). Moreover, the statistics presented the former paragraphs indicate that UNICEF has still long way to go however, they certainly are on the right tracks. In addition, their goals for the year 2015 are truly a hope of the world since they want to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger from this planet and ensure universal primary education for all children (Frost, 2005, pp. 123-129). Without any doubts, if they achieve these and many other of their goals, then the world would become a better place to live. References Carland, Maria Pinto, & Gihring, Lisa A. 2003. Careers in international affairs. Washington D.C: Georgetown University Press. Cash, Richard A., Keusch, Gerald, Lamstein, Joel, & UNICEF. 1987. Child health & survival: the UNICEF GOBI-FFF program. London: Routledge. Connolly, Sean. 2009. UNICEF. London: Hodder Childrens Division. Epstein, Irving, & Limage, Leslie. 2008. The Greenwood encyclopedia of childrens issues worldwide. California: Greenwood Publishing Group. Frost, Nick. 2005. Child Welfare: Issues in child welfare. London: Taylor & Francis. Gillespie, Stuart, McLachlan, Milla, Shrimpton, Roger, World Bank & UNICEF. 2003. Combating malnutrition: time to act. New York: World Bank Publications. Haxton, David P., & UNICEF. 1988. The child in South Asia, issues in development as if children mattered. New York: UNICEF. Maddocks, Steven. 2004. UNICEF. New York: Raintree. Reyes, Gilbert, & Jacobs, Gerard A. 2006. Handbook of International Disaster Psychology: Interventions with special needs populations. California: Greenwood Publishing Group. Suen, Anastasia. 2002. UNICEF: United Nations Childrens Fund. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group. Suen, Anastasia. 2003. UNICEF. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group. UNICEF & Zouev, Alexander. 1999. Generation in jeopardy: children in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. New York: M. E. Sharpe. UNICEF. 2002. A life like mine. London: DK Publishing. UNICEF. 2004. The State of the worlds children. London: Oxford University Press for UNICEF. UNICEF. 2005. The State of the Worlds Children 2006: excluded and invisible. New York: UNICEF. UNICEF. 2007. Protecting the worlds children: impact of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in diverse legal systems. London: Cambridge University Press. Volberg, Thorsten. 2008. Gender Disparities in Indias Educational System and the Role of UNICEF. Germany: GRIN Verlag. World Health Organization & UNICEF. 2003. Global strategy for infant and young child feeding. New York: World Health Organization. Zahr, Carla Abou., Wardlaw, Tessa M., Hill, Ken., WHO, UNICEF. 2004. Maternal mortality in 2000: estimates developed by WHO, UNICEF and UNFPA. New York: World Health Organization. Zizzamia, Alba Isabel. 1987. NGO/UNICEF cooperation: a historical perspective. New York: United Nations Childrens Fund. Read More