UNICEF a Part of Programm the United Nations System - Essay Example

? Topic: UNICEF (an NGO) UNICEF was first established by the United Nations General Assembly on 11 December, 1946 after the Second World War when there was great devastation in countries. It was set up in reaction to this destruction to facilitate the affected children with proper food and healthcare amenities. In 1953, the United Nations System permanently made UNICEF a part of their programme and it was only then that the original acronym and its meaning was shortened. The name, United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund was shortened to United Nations Children’s Fund but the acronym popularly remained UNICEF. It has its headquarters in New York and it is also a member of the UNDG and its Executive Committee. UNICEF’s main aim is to provide humanitarian and developmental services to deprived children and women in third-world countries. The organization wants to help these children to survive and thrive from the time to their born till their adolescent years. It is also known to provide the most number of vaccines to third world nations. They basically strive to provide hygienic water and sanitation facilities, quality education and basic healthcare services to children. They want to protect boys and girls from exploitation, abuse and chronic diseases and fight for their human rights. UNICEF is steadfast and dedicated to changing the lives of such deprived children of the world. Their selfless motives work towards their protection, prevention and development with the help of positive and sensible planning and supervision of policy results. UNICEF has established Millennium Developmental Goals (MDGs) to monitor child related issues globally. Their aim is to study the situation of children and women in different parts of the world, by collecting and analyzing data and work to resolve their issues by sensible tactics and methodologies. The collected data work as indicators. Then they are further disseminated and published as databases for authentic use and purposes. UNICEF is given funds, donations and grants by individuals, foundations, enterprises and the State, voluntarily (http://unicefinnovation.org/ ABOUT UNICEF). The organization has to rely on private donations and grants from governments to fulfill their mission. Governments contribute the most, to about two-thirds of UNICEF’s resources while the rest is contributed by private individuals through the National Committees. UNICEF aims to provide community-level services and amenities for the long-term developmental goals of children. It is also privileged to be awarded by the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965 and the Concord Prince of Asturias Award in the year 2006. UNICEF is actively operating in 190 countries around the world. They support for children’s rights through their country programmes and National Committees. They have their goals and achievements in each one of these countries. With head-quarters in New York and 200 operating offices in the other countries, their mission is collectively pursued with the help of host governments. There are seven regional offices which is available for any technical help that any of these country offices require. In fact there are only 9 countries and territories of the world where it is not actively operating. These include; Singapore, Monaco, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Mauritius, Malta, Cyprus, Brunei Darussalam and Bahamas. UNICEF’s New York headquarters is responsible for the management and administration of resources. Their main supply of resources is done from Copenhagen. These include basic items like vaccines, medicines, nutritional supplements, equipment for emergency shelter, food items, and educational materials. Their board of directors comprises of 36 Executive Members who continue to develop policies, approve strategies and supervise administrative and financial plans. The United Nations Economic and Social Council appoint government representatives to be a part of the UNICEF’s Executive Board. They are usually elected on a three-year term basis. The current Executive Director of the organization is Anthony Lake who succeeded Ann M. Veneman is May 2010. UNICEF is accountable for its actions to the government as it is an inter-governmental foundation. United Nations Common System develops an annual salary and benefits package for them. is linked to other major international organizations that work towards their selfless motives and support each other. These include: WHO (World Health Organization) The World Bank UNESCO African Union United Nations UNICEF is unique in its philosophy and working styles. It plays a central role in realizing the needs of the children of the world. It can influence the decision makers with the kind of global authority that they have. It is an understood fact that they have a selfless motive behind the well-being of children. With the help of NGO’s individuals and government, they can turn innovative ideas into reality. UNICEF has about 6 billion private donors and specialists such as doctors and lawyers who fund them on a regular basis, other than the government (Mayo, 2005). UNICEF was created with the fundamental goal of nurturing children and to overcome the obstacles that come into the way of a child’s development. They work for a humanitarian cause. With the cooperation of others they want to over ride the hurdles relating to poverty, violence, disease and exploitation. If children are provided with the best facilities soon after they are born, then that would help set important foundations for the rest of their life. UNICEF has achieved major landmarks since the time it was first established in 1946 in Europe after the Second World War to provide emergency healthcare and food to children. When we look at its history we see that the movie star Danny Keya became UNICEF’s ‘Ambassador at Large’ in 1954. In1961, it diversified its interest into education after working on child health issues for many years with educational programmes and teacher training services in newly independent nations. It advocated the Breastfeeding Code and got it approved by the World Health Assembly in 1981 to encourage breastfeeding for the health and nourishment of children. A year later, it launched a revolutionary campaign based on economical practices; immunization, breastfeeding, oral rehydration techniques and growth monitoring. In 1989, the Convention on the Rights of the Child became the most popularly accepted human rights treaty of the world. World’s Health Summit for Children was held by the Head of the State and UN government to set 10-yeardevelopmental goals for children in 1990. In 1996, UNICEF supported the study in the Machel Report on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children. Say Yes for Children campaign was launched in 2001 to change the world with children. And then in 2002 a Special Session on Children was convened by the UN General Assembly to reenergize global commitment to infant’s rights. UNICEF is dedicated to improving children’s lives by promoting girl’s education. They insist on completing at least primary education. Girls and boys must be treated as equal as they are other other half of population. If girls are educated then they would grow up to be better intellectuals and citizens and most importantly better mothers to their own children. Most developing countries are hit with epidemics and chronic diseases like HIV/Aids and hepatitis. The rate of these diseases tends to more in third world nations due to poor hygiene, sanitation and poor health care facilities. UNICEF strives to protect malnourished infants from these harmful and life-taking diseases by providing immunization, vaccines and proper healthcare for free. Those who do get affected must be taught to learn with dignity and stop further spread of such diseases. UNICEF believes that no child should be abused or exploited on any grounds. It is always available for emergency relief services in times of floods, droughts, famine or wars. It works in the benefit of those children who are threatened or exploited or not given the much-needed rights especially girls and women. The organization endorses the Convention on the Rights of the Child and struggle for peace and security. They take actions against those who exploit innocent and helpless children. It is also a part of the Global Movement for Children. It is a collated effort committed to improve the lives of children of the world. This, along with United Nations Special Session on Children provide an excellent platform for young people to voice their opinions about the decisions taken by others that effect their lives (Babington, 2008). UNICEF realizes that children are the future of tomorrow. They need proper development and nurturing to progress in life. Their rights and needs must be obliged. Children must not be exploited or abused. We will now look in detail at the main focus areas of UNICEF: Basic Education and Gender Equality: UNICEF regards education as a powerful means of preventing child labor. Children who study in school are at less risk of exploitation. Conversely, children who are working and have an opportunity to learn are in a better position to improve their situation. UNICEF’s aim to provide basic education as a preventive strategy seeks to respond to three main challenges: Access: getting working children into the classroom. Strategies to achieve this include early childhood programmes, distance learning, bilingual education and flexible scheduling of classes, so that children who are working can also attend school. Second chance opportunities: getting working children in school often requires transitional arrangements, including non-formal education and accelerated classes. Retention: keeping children at risk of dropping out due to economic, social or cultural reasons. Intervention includes financial incentives to families and improving the quality of education by integrating life skills and livelihood components. Millions of children work to help their families in ways that are neither harmful of exploitive. But millions more are put to work that drain childhood of all joys and crush the right to normal physical and mental development. Little is known about child work, what they do and how their working may affect them. Gender awareness is a critical aspect of all UNICEF programming. Ending gender bias and discrimination is crucial to the empowerment of women and girls and to achieve gender equality in education. Applying a gender perspective helps to make differences innpower relations visible. It also helps us to see more clearly the needs and rights of girls and boys in particular geographical, cultural and economic contexts. The ultimate goal is to eliminate gender biasness and discriminatory practices and policies, both overt and covert. This is the heart of gender analysis. Gender analysis should be the precondition for identifying and understanding problems as they relate to basic children’s rights. Gender analysis guides the process of finding viable and sustainable solutions to the problems of access, quality and learning achievements. Education is the birth right of every individual. It enhances our lives and is fundamental aspect in the development of individuals and society and can impact on the future generations to come.. The future can be bright is a child is given proper education from the start of his life. UNICEF strives to make children aware of the benefits of education and how it can help them achieve better lifestyles, living standards and knowledge to protect and defend themselves socially, economically and politically. They want to erase disparities of all kinds like gender biasness in education so that every child benefits from quality education regardless of any background or socio-economic reasons. The Millennium Declaration 6 and Education for All is an innovative step and structural programme to provide social justice and opportunities for all. They are dedicated in their main aim of providing quality education with equality, growth and innovation at all times and to everyone, be it crisis or peace, or urban or rural areas (Agha, 2006). Young Child Development and Survival Goals: In 2007, a major loss of 9.2 million lives of children aged under 5, were lost due to infectious diseases. Those diseases were serious illnesses, but had preventable causes. Infants died due to pneumonia, diarrhea and malaria. HIV/ Aids also accounted for a large number of deaths. The main reasons for these illnesses were poor hygiene, water and sanitation facilities. Contaminated water and polluted environment affects the health of newborns and infants greatly. Half a million women die in pregnancy and the process of childbirth in the world annually. UNICEF aims to provide proper health care facilities to improve the infant mortality rate and lives of women. Simple and low-cost techniques and technologies are increasingly being provided to under developed nations such as vaccines, antibiotic and nutritional supplements. People are encouraged to use insecticide-treated bed-nets and simple breastfeeding and hygiene practices. If adopted on a personal level, millions of unnecessary maternal and infant deaths could be avoided. Counseling and teaching hygiene practices can all make a difference to their lives. Malnourished children are on the brink of survival. Extinction or at least prevention of these diseases is necessary to take people out of the vicious circle of poverty and get a chance to improve their lives. UNICEF is a hardcore believer in its 60 years of experience and its Millennium Developmental Goals that it can improve child mortality by 2015. They are steadfast in their Medium Term Strategic Plan for 2006-2009 to ensure that child development and survival is the first priority of any child. Prevention against Violation and Abuse: a large number of children are exploited and abused in all parts of the world. Exploitation includes severe forms child labor to injurious human practices like the cutting of female genital organs. Girls are forced into early child marriages increasing their child bearing age and destroying their health. Children are exploited during armed conflicts and process of globalization. Other children if not affected are deprived of any sort of protection. Children must be given their due rights by protecting them against such abuses and exploitation for it affects their survival, growth and development. UNICEF’s Medium Term Strategic Goals, Convention on Rights of the Child, Millennium declaration and Child Protection Strategy are all committed to provide adequate protection to children. International human right activists and foundations support and endorse these. They advocate achieving a protective environment for children through child protection systems, protective social practices and child empowerment tools. All of this can be achieved with the help of sound planning and monitoring of situations. Policy advocation: Social and Economic Policy: UNICEF concentrates to reduce the negative impacts of social and economic policy on children. Their work is to analyze and provide sensible solutions on issues like poverty, disparity, protection and social budgeting. They work to put forward the rights of children on the public policy so that the media, society and international inter-governmental organizations, law and law-makers consider it significant enough to react and take actions accordingly. With the help of analysis of social and economic policy, issues can be adequately addressed and new approaches and policies can be determined to improve the conditions and lives of the deprived. Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination are the innovative programmes of UNICEF so that children’s rights can be at the centre of global and country-level policy debates. With the help of country programme and national planning cycle a comprehensive analysis of the situation of children and women can be looked into and taken actions upon. UNICEF sustains national reporting to the Child Rights and CEDAW committee. UNICEF published a series of report in three consecutive years, 2006, 2007, and 2007 which was called State of the World’s Children. It has devoted its flagship publication of this report of 2011 to adolescents. The younger generation of today’s society is facing challenges due to climatic change, increasing urbanization, global economic recession and high levels of unemployment. A survey showed that there are 1.2 billion adolescents in the world and 90 % of these people live in developing nations. A large number of these children are deprived of basic rights like education, protection and healthcare and many are abused and exploited on larger terms. The report therefore dominantly species the need to achieve these rights and the importance of investing time, money and effort to improve the lives of these adolescents to take them out of the vicious cycles of poverty and inequality. The report is mainly to assist African countries like Kenya, Somalia, and Sierra Leone to attain the MDGs for the survival of children. UNICEF works in partnership with UN System partners towards the accomplishment of these goals as they pool expertise, knowledge and money. It has already seen accelerating progress and hope to continue this for long (Agha, 2006). UNICEF is criticized for its specific policies. The Catholic Church also criticized it at times for withdrawing donations. It is argued that UNICEF also encourages abortion by supplying sterilizations for this purpose, when it is in fact unethical and against God’s will. When UNICEF endorsed China’s One-Child policy, it was also looked upon with criticism. UNICEF is supported by ordinary people, specialists, celebrities and young people in general as they are all enthusiastic about humanitarian causes. They can be volunteers, interns at UNICEF offices or simple young ordinary children who go from door to door to collect funds by ‘Trick or Treat for UNICEF’. The Trick or Treat has become a tradition at Christmas where children collect funds for UNICEF to help other needy children, instead of candies or gifts. The efforts of all these individuals count a lot for the organization. It raises funds plus instills the feeling of helping others in need. They all want to support the aim of the organization to provide healthcare, shelter, education and equality for the deprived people of the world and improving their lives in general. As celebrities attract attention so a lot of them have been associated with UNICEF to support in its cause. When ordinary people see celebrities working for such human causes, they are themselves persuaded in doing well for the society in general. They endorse campaigns and agendas gaining media and public attention on a larger scale. Actors like Liam Neeson and Mia Farrow have been long associates of UNICEF. Whoever is the current Miss Universe, works with UNICEF. Their fame and talents helps to raise more funds and attention from people in general and also government. UNICEF can be contacted 24 hours and 7 days a week with the help of internet through Twitter, Facebook, Skype and Orkut. Internet blogs also act as a fundraiser for them. Donations can be funded anytime with much convenience. All this ensures child equality and enforcement of children’s right and work to support with UNICEF’s aims and mission. References: Mayo M. (2005) Global Citizens: Social movements and the challenges of globalization, London: Zed. Boyden, J. (1990) Childhood and the policy makers: A comparative perspective on the globalization of childhood. In, James, A. and Prout, A. (Eds) Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood. Basingstoke: Falmer Press. Babington, A., Hickey, S. and Mitlin, D. (2008) Can NGOs Make a Difference? London: Zed Books. Pero, D. (2007) Inclusionary Rhetoric/Exclusionary Practices (Chapter: 8) Oxford: Berghahn. Pero, D. (2007) Migrants and Politics, Civil Society and Immigration in Italy, In Ethnic and Racial Studies, 28 (5) pp:832-858 Eade, D (Edition) (2000) Development, NGOS and Civil Society www.unicef.org, (2010) Child survival. last updated on October 16 2010. Accessed the website on May 19 2011. http://www.unicef.org/childsurvival/index.html www.unicef.org, (2010) Protection. last updated on September 22 2010. Accessed the website on May 19 2011. http://www.unicef.org/protection/index.html Smylie, James H. (2001-01-01). "Presbyterians initiated UNICEF's 'Trick-or-Treat' program 50 years ago". The Presbyterian Outlook. http://www.pres-outlook.com/reports-a-resources/presbyterian-heritage-articles/856.html. Retrieved 2010-12-08 UNICEF funds TeachAIDS work in Botswana". TeachAIDS. 2 June 2010. http://teachaids.org/blog/unicef-funds-teachaids-work-in-botswana/. Retrieved 16 December 2010. Agha, L. (2006) Accelerated Learning, General Paper. Second edition, Ferozesons Printers (Pvt) Ltd. Read More