At the beginning of 2021 when recalling the early days of UNICEF for the first 75th Anniversary Quarterly, I referred to the aftermath of the 1939-1945 World War as ‘days of great political fragility and rage as divisive as our own’. From those terrible years of suffering, phoenixes, such as UNICEF and the UN itself, managed to rise. UNICEF’s parents and early leaders, as we have remembered them in this Quarterly series, knew from experience that the world had to come together to mend itself.
Reflecting now on UNICEF’s trajectory towards its 100th anniversary in 2046, the worrying state of our COVID-scarred, environmentally-agonised and politically fractured world gives rise to the hope that out of this darkness too, a regenerative process can occur. And why not? A new cohort of UN and UNICEF leaders will surely rise to the occasion. And they will need to. Internationalism itself is under more pressure than ever before in our lifetimes. We depend on the next generation to hold the flame aloft.
As I write, COP26 is reaching its concluding phase in Glasgow. We are daily reminded that a rise in global temperature of more than 1.5º presents an existential threat to our children’s and their children’s futures. Despite extraordinary efforts, including by young people themselves, the short-termism of many nations and powerful interest groups hampers sufficiently urgent transformative action. An irreparable degree of heating has already damaged the prospects for millions of today’s most vulnerable children and families, whose lives will be inexpressibly harder in 2046 than they are today.
In war-time Britain a poster instructed the population to ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’. This would seem to be a sanguine piece of advice for our worried selves, and for UNICEF – as long as it includes facing up to the challenges ahead, not hoping for the best and continuing down well-worn paths because alternatives are too difficult. We need to feel that dramatic and positive change can happen because the crisis is already upon us.
The UN’s humanitarian apparatus, so carefully constructed in the post-War years, is under great pressure. Key sister bodies, including UNHCR, WFP and UNWRA, face growing demands with reduced resources. And the UN system as a whole has recently been suffering from a deficit of political respect from key member states, whose support for international treaties, laws and institutions is their only guarantee of effectiveness.
At the same time, populations in marginal environments are taking more heat – literally and figuratively – than they can bear. Between 2000 and 2019, there was an 80 per cent global rise in disasters compared to the previous two decades, with floods increasing by 130 per cent and extreme weather events by 230 per cent, according to the UN’s Office of the Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs. Droughts, floods, pandemics and extreme weather events fracture societies and economies. This trend is bound to continue.
Within the UN system, the defence of founding Resolutions and mandates, as well as Conventions – the CRC for example – that shape organisational missions, is going to prove vital in the next decades. Supporting the UN system, and retaining a degree of independence within it, will be necessary for those operating on the frontline. The ongoing disruption to existing programmes from emergencies and the additional demands for assistance will have a significant effect on UNICEF, as on others.
Assuredly UNICEF will rise to the occasion. The Children’s Fund is built on solid foundations and enjoys a high reputation, thanks to the commitment of leaders and staff over many decades. But ever more serious tests are coming. Today, drivers of UN humanitarian convoys to contested parts of a country can be arrested and imprisoned on grounds of ‘terrorism’. Seekers of asylum are being forced by frontier guardians into the sea to drown, or left to starve in frozen borderlands. The numbers of those fleeing from climate-related catastrophe are inevitably going to rise, and reaching them with aid is going to prove ever more politically complex.
UNICEF’s chief strength is in its programme and the network of field-level partnerships on which that depends. A longstanding programme that delivers evidence of life-saving interventions for children in need is an asset of immeasurable importance. No upstream policy articulation, with its targets and monitoring arrangements, could ever pack the same punch in the court of world opinion. In the impending competition for resources, organizations with solid records on the ground will continue to attract support.
Where will the major UNICEF investments be? Programmes in those countries most affected by man-made environmental crisis may revert to priorities similar to those established all those post-War years ago. Nutritional supplements, disease control, mass vaccination, care for and resettlement of the forced migrant and displaced, basic maternal and child health – these core activities may recover paramount importance.
The year 2030 may prove to be a watershed. Targets for emissions reduction and climate justice will have become even more important. And it is in this year that assessments will be made on progress on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, established in 2015. Let us hope that the usual inclination to generate data on an industrial scale, exaggerating positive achievements and downplaying negative, will be kept in check. Perhaps the policy balance will swing away from global uniformity towards targeted material assistance, flexibility, adaptation, local initiative and participation at field level.
If there is one action above all that UNICEF could initiate now for the days ahead it is to reach out anew to young people. Not as their benefactor, but as their partner, and not only in countries where programmes are delivered, but also in countries where consciences need to be alerted and funds raised. In any such initiative, XUNICEFers, via their children, grandchildren and social networks can play a useful part.
The urgency of today’s drive to limit the damage of climate warming has come from children and young people. They have staked their claim to the future, and their determination will save our planet, and our international systems for cooperation and development, if they can be saved. And there is something we and UNICEF can do to help them: Keep Calm and Carry On.
This article is part of the XUNICEF News and Views Quarterly Newsletter, December 2021.
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