Priorities for 2021 : Henrietta Fore

Dear Colleagues,

As we enter a new year, I wanted to share some thoughts about our priorities and strategies for 2021.

2020 was an unprecedented year in many ways. In a matter of weeks, it transformed how we think about, and deliver, our programming for children.

Against this challenging backdrop, we have reviewed our progress and have reconfirmed our 2020 priorities for 2021: Distance Learning to save futures, Immunization to save lives, Water to save communities, and Mental Health to save families.

Our work will continue to be shaped by the ongoing response to COVID-19 and our efforts to help governments recover and rebuild all the systems children need in the wake of the pandemic — systems that can respond to future pandemics and threats such as antimicrobial resistance.

We will lead the procurement and equitable delivery and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, through the COVAX facility — and help countries prepare for this historic undertaking.

Together with national and international partners, we will work with communities to strengthen the programmes and systems related to children’s health and survival — including immunization, nutrition, ECD, mental health and water and sanitation.

We will continue reimagining education — including through new digital delivery platforms — to provide every child and young person with the education and skills they need. This work is building momentum around the world, and we are now developing tools to measure and expand progress in this key area.

We will expand our work on social policy and protection, to ensure that national budgets prioritize children and support families in new and innovative ways as they cope with the ongoing economic fallout of the pandemic.

As we continue to “stay and deliver” within humanitarian emergencies, we will also strive to continue improving the timeliness and quality of our humanitarian response and emergency programmes to build a foundation for lasting development — including by implementing the results of the just-completed humanitarian review. As UNICEF staff, all of us should gain experience in both humanitarian and development contexts.

Across our programmes, we need to engage young people as partners, not beneficiaries, so they develop the skills needed to make a difference in their communities.

And as always, our programmes must reflect our commitments on gender, to give every child — girls and boys alike — the support and care they need.

All these priorities will be reflected in our new Strategic Plan, which we are developing in close consultation with our Executive Board.

In the coming year, we also see some areas in which we must accelerate our work.

While our fundraising and advocacy efforts were successful in 2020 under the circumstances, we need to be more aggressive going forward — especially given a trio of challenges: a highly competitive donor landscape, many new small private donors, and donor governments increasingly focused on domestic economic challenges. As part of our digital fundraising push, we will execute transactional fundraising and two-way social media supporter engagement in line with the growing trends in e-commerce. We will also seize opportunities related to UNICEF’s upcoming 75th anniversary — a milestone moment that will help draw more support to our mission and our unwavering focus on child rights.

We must continue expanding our promising work with the private sector — not only to summon funds to our programming, but to tap into their innovations, products, market reach and expertise. Our partnerships model needs to be re-considered to create more space for our private sector partners to help us achieve our mission for children.

We must continue our good work on scaling-up innovations, looking at areas that can be truly transformative for our programmes – bold changes that move the needle for children and advance our role as both convener and implementer for child-friendly innovations, especially in artificial intelligence and new technologies.

We will continue our journey towards becoming a “real-time UNICEF,” with programming and operations supported by data of the highest quality. This will also include a new focus on digital solutions as well as social and behavioral sciences that can help us better shape and target our programming. We need to accelerate and broaden our intellectual leadership globally on the first two decades of a child’s life, and this work will help us achieve this goal.

We will continue to lead or support UN-wide initiatives in areas like connectivity, innovation, children and young people, gender, mental health, data, and the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse. We will also continue to support the rollout of the reform of the UN development system, including in critical areas such as business operations.

Our efforts on organizational improvements and streamlining have sparked some excellent ideas and proposals — some of which have already been put in place. It is time to finish this important work, and give our staff members the modern, agile and efficient systems, and time, they need to continue serving and supporting children.

Throughout, we will continue improving our human resources system. We must not only keep our people at the center of our systems and policies, but also use this moment to continue working on strengthening our organizational culture and tackling some longstanding challenges like performance management.

We know that some of these changes and conversations may be difficult, because they challenge the status quo. But throughout our history, the people of UNICEF have never been afraid to change, adapt and re-invent our organization. Our success in adapting so quickly to COVID-19 proves this.

As the challenges children and young people are facing continue to change, we must change, too. And we will.

As we begin a new year, let us both celebrate and build on UNICEF’s 75-year legacy.

Henrietta H. Fore
UNICEF Executive Director