Goodbye to Tony / Welcome to Henrietta

We welcomed Henrietta Fore as UNICEF’s new Executive Director. She replied saying that she looked forward to working closely with us.

We also said our thanks and goodbyes to Tony Lake, while at the same time inviting him to join us in XUNICEF. Tony worked closely with us in the campaign for Baquer Namazi’s freedom. He accepted our invitation to XUNICEF enthusiastically and is now a member.

XUNICEF

December 26, 2017

Ms Henrietta H. Fore

Executive Director

UNICEF

Dear Ms Fore, 

Welcome to UNICEF! As retirees and former staff around the globe, we wish to congratulate you on your appointment as the Seventh Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund.  

Our organization is called “XUNICEF”, an informal grouping which represents a major and steadily growing part of the UNICEF family, its alumni.  We continue to be deeply devoted to UNICEF’s mission, share in its challenges, and take great pride in its work for children.  Where emergencies, public advocacy or other needs arise, we have come forward to help. 

In addition to our information sharing network, we meet periodically for reunions in various parts of the world.  During those meetings we rediscover that the commitment to children we nurtured during our UNICEF days invariably carries over to efforts in our communities and home countries. As one retiree puts it, “You can take staff out of UNICEF, but you can’t take UNICEF out of its staff!” 

We welcome greatly your appointment, recognizing especially your previous exposure to UNICEF’s work as part of your broader international involvements.   As a global movement championing the well-being and rights of children, UNICEF is not only a United Nations body, sharing the UN mission and working with its governmental partners, but also an organization which depends on an active network of national committees, private donors, committed NGOs, and hundreds of thousands of volunteers and individuals committed to a better life for children. We are proud to be part of this global movement.

It has also been our privilege in recent years to have interacted with your immediate predecessor, Tony Lake, on a number of issues. Particularly appreciated has been his strong support to our advocacy for the release on humanitarian grounds of our colleague, Baquer Namazi. Unjustly imprisoned at Evin prison in Tehran since February 2016, our respected and much-loved former staff member is now 81 years old and in poor health. Notable also was Tony Lake’s  encouragement of UNICEF’s Global Staff Association to add its voice to ours pressing for Baquer’s release. We remain extremely worried about the latter’s situation and hope we can continue discussing further actions with you over the coming months.

Finally, in representing the large body of retirees, we assure you of our steadfast commitment to furthering UNICEF’s mission from wherever we live around the world.  Call on us at anytime - whether for humanitarian emergencies, public advocacy, or local insights. 

With warmest greetings and best wishes for the success of your work and the work of UNICEF in 2018 and beyond.

Sincerely,

Signed on behalf of thousands of UNICEF retirees and former staff around the world

Malika Abrous,  Sheila Barry, Maggie Black, Moncef Bouhafa, Robert Cohen, John Donohue, Kul Gautam, Marta Mauras, Tom McDermott, Mary Racelis, Stephen Umemoto, Eimi Watanabe, Mehr Khan Williams and 720 other members of XUNICEF

Dear Tony,

These must be hectic days for you - perhaps for you, as for us, days of wondering what may come next for UNICEF and for you yourself.  

All of us have felt the same - the rush of having too little time to finish what needs finishing, the frustrations of trying to wrap up what cannot be wrapped.  

At the same time, I hope these days are also an opportunity for everyone in and around UNICEF to tell you how much we all value, love and appreciate you for the years you have given to UNICEF and to the children of the world.  You have done a fantastic job, and we all know it and thank you for it.

Somehow I suspect that you like most of us, will never see yourself as ever 'retired'.  Indeed, you will not be.  You are about to join a long list of people who see UNICEF not as a job, but as a vocation. People who will continue to work towards accomplishing all that UNICEF stands for - a better life for children and for their families, an absence of fear, violence and war, in short to their rights as people.  

In particular, of course, I want to thank you for all the heavy lifting you have done on behalf of Baquer and his family.   They know, he knows, and all of us know how hard you worked on the issue.  The desired result may not appear for a while, but your efforts will eventually bear fruit.

Join us please in the xUNICEF team.  We would love to keep in touch with you, and to continue counting on your support.   It will be an honor to have you with us.

Very best wishes,