Claudio Sepulveda-Alvarez, RIP
During his tenure with UNICEF, he was the representative to Turkey, Deputy Director for Latin America and the Caribbean.
His son published this obituary on the web.
Ken Gibbs has sent us his recollections of Claudio from 30 years ago.
"Claudio and I were both made to sit through a long and arduous UNICEF meeting leading up to the next Five-Year-Plan. Even in those days, UNICEF was not known for organizing planning meetings well. This meant that the engineers were made to sit through all the health, rural development and women's sector discussions where we were not encouraged to contribute.
I saw Claudio listening to the discussion on malnutrition, while at the same time, studying the Pakistan-wide census data. When it seemed that the young hopefuls had run out of steam and finished saying what they wanted to say about the subject, Claudio asked what provision had been made to ensure that women falling pregnant for the first time were given special attention?
Blank looks all around.
We were discussing malnutrition, and here he comes with a question about maternal obstetrical care? He proceeded to show that maternal mortality is by far the highest in first pregnancies and how this is easily visible in the data set which we all were using, but had singularly failed to see. He did it very diplomatically, but the message was clear - we need to up our game if we wanted to have a positive impact on young girls who are culturally vulnerable there in Pakistan. It made for some significant changes in the programme proposals.
Here he was, a stateless, ex-South American doctor working in probably his third language, able to translate digital data into real world terms. I was delighted to see someone else who could make sense of demographic data sets. I wished that he had been on our regular staff, but he was simply a visitor sent by New York to help us."
May his soul rest in peace.
I am surprised for the sad News Detlef...I was wondering why he did not reply to my e-mails for some time Now. I had régular exchanges with him and he has Given me copiés of his three books. We became Friends when we were in Hanoi and he and Doris would invite us during our R&R trips to Bangkok. Claudio was one Of the most érudite colleagues we had in Uniçef , sometimes to the extent of being almost pédantic, but great company for conversation on all kinds of ésotéric topics . He had an amazing wealth of knowledge on many subjects, as the son's obit clearly shows. While he had A diverse career in diffèrent organisations Claudio was especially proud of his Uniçef days, particularly his Rep. Posting in Turkey...which he wrote at length about in one of his books.
ReplyDeleteMay he Rest in Peace...we pray for his Soûl.
Fouad