I am not a philologist. I lean towards natural science and my arithmetic tells me that if we distribute attention to 2.2 billion children, then those in greatest need receive less than the full attention.
My ‘every child’ friends probably meant to say that no child should be ex ante excluded from UNICEF assistance. Every child should be on UNICEF’s horizon, including those that happen to live in circumstances that seem to be better than the most abominable crisis situation. When it comes to programming, UNICEF would then make a selection, so the most vulnerable groups would be assisted. Of course, nobody should be discriminated against because he is born to rich parents. But I remain concerned that, in practice, UNICEF rarely focusses on the most vulnerable.
You may say this all is semantics, and you are probably right. But before your eyes glaze over, let me inform you that the ‘special focus’ or the ‘particular concern’ for the most vulnerable evoked in literally every UNICEF programme document or strategy does not bear out in UNICEF activities and reports.
I checked more than two dozen CPDs, according to which the raison d'être for UNICEF engagement is to finish the unfinished agenda and address still existing inequities.
Two thirds of the CPDs do not characterise those especially vulnerable children; the rest talks vaguely about linguistic or ethnic minorities or poor districts; very few CPDs identify groups such as Roma, afro-descendants, or children of migrant workers. One CPD boldly states that: ”Identifying children at greatest risk is a prerequisite for leaving no child behind …”. Still, having been in that country for forty years, the UNICEF office doesn't seem to have figured out who the vulnerable actually are and what will be done about their vulnerability.
Unsurprisingly, only two of 25 corresponding annual reports describe initiatives squarely designed to have a benefit for specific vulnerable groups. (The exception were children with disabilities, who get more frequent mentions in CPDs and annual reports).
I know that a lot of good is being done, even under the guise of (quote) “increasing the uptake of decentralized, inclusive, gender-responsive, convergent, quality social services and policies”. But something is seriously amiss.
Marginalization and vulnerability are societal constructs. Marginalization exists, not because your Head of State suffers from Alzheimer, or someone forgot about the people in distant valleys, or could not read statistics or was lacking analytical capacities. The status quo is not an accident. Marginalization is an engrained societal process where everyone pursues his or her interests. Marginalization is the result of competition over scarce resources. Most people do not want their taxes spent on minority people, who may not have ones’ religious beliefs, have strange feeding habits, speak in a difficult language or have a skin colour two tones darker than theirs.
It will take more than a little project to make a difference. Save for dictatorships, governments represent the majority of people; governments therefore don’t rush to spend money for the benefit of minority groups. UNICEF may have to do a lot of convincing. UNICEF has to move against the current.
(The reviewed CPDs and country annual reports were from: A, A, A, B, B, B, C, C, E, E, G, I, I, I, K, K, M, M, N, N, P, R, T, U, Z.)
More Insights from Outside the Bubble
Detlef can be contacted via detlefpalm55@gmail.com .
So, when we nailed the colors of Equity to our masts, for some staff it was seen as yet another way of categorizing children, however, we also work in societies where children from certain groups ( ethnic, linguistic, class, religious) are actually excluded from certain services through social rather than administrative mechanisms, much more complex and harder to address. There is also the political dimension because it is about how a society's resources are allocated and here is where we came upon the rocks and shoals of politics, always a sensitive topic, many of our teams were not oriented to negotiate these waters and so we either hugged the safe waters of the edges or skittered over the top. With a few exceptions, we lacked the institutional DNA to engage usefully. Today, we have even a more complex challenge when donor countries, engage in policies that violate the rights of children in very public ways ( The U.S handling of children at the southern borders) we have to hold our fire...None of this is intractable but we then have to promote and encourage senior staff to cultivate these attributes...We have in the past had some UNIC EF senior give clean bills of health to regimes that are serial violators of rights...Ouch
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