XUNICEF News and Views

This week Gianni Murzi chats with Sree about his new occupation as a photographer and a passionate story teller. We have included several of  his photo features in our earlier editions. Nowadays Gianni is based in Rome, and he travels where the passion for photography takes him. He likes to work on stories that have social issues worth telling and he continues to compete in global photography competitions.  Gianni is a physician and from 1970 to 1985 worked as a medical doctor in Mozambique and Zanzibar. During his career of nearly two decades in UNICEF, he worked in several countries, including Burkina Faso, Iraq, and Senegal.  He also served in Brussels and Programme Division (NYHQ).   Gianni was the first UNICEF Representative in Moscow. After his retirement, he returned to UNICEF to serve as Acting Representative in India, Zimbabwe, Iran and Albania. Listen to Gianni narrate how he discovered photography. He concludes with a humorous story from his early days in UNICEF Moscow. As

  1. If you worked with UNICEF in the 1980's, this poster will be very familiar to you? Where and when was it taken? What was the name of the little girl whose smiling face became so well known during UNICEF's fundraising campaigns for the Child Survival and Development Revolution? Can't recall? Click here for the concluding article in our Quarterly of June 2021. 2. This lady was the first woman to serve as a UNICEF Representative. What was her name? Why was her former husband so famous? In what countries did she serve as Representative?   Can't recall? Click here for A Messy Affair, A Friendly Divorce, and an Unexpected New Career which we published on June 8, 2021.

I had put my alarm to wake me every hour. I didn't need to. I was awake all night, listening to the demons hissing,...

by Ken Gibbs Behaving my age has never been something I understand, according to my sternest critic; and so too when I found myself helping out in one small part of Kashmir following their devastating earthquake in 2005.  The mountains are just there to be climbed and, besides, the water is sparkling when it bubbles out of the many springs one finds in the mountains, and it tastes beautiful. We were travelling to see conditions in an area which few people had visited after the earthquake, and found ourselves in a bazaar town beside a river.  We were thirsty and decided that tea would be a good idea.  It was ordered and came, sweet and laced with buffalo milk.  We complimented the restaurateur and asked where he got his water since this was our principal mission, to determine the extent of damage to water supply systems. He replied, “Oh, our water system was badly damaged and we need a completely new one.”  This came as some surprise because we could see that he had a full tank of water

As a follow up to the long-ish article I wrote last week about my wife's and my experiences with UNICEF in Sudan, I decided on a complementary article about Sudan from the philatelic point of view, including material that has some historical interest and others that relate to the country's relations with the UN and its Agencies. It is unfortunate that in my collection I do not have any stamps related directly  to UNICEF. Moreover, from official catalogues I have found that Sudan until 2008 had not issued a single stamp to commemorate its cooperation with UNICEF, except one set in 1988 related to Child Survival & Development Revolution ....strange, for a country where UNICEF has a 70 year history and where it has one of its largest programmes and staffing !  This is one of the earliest stamps issued by the Sudan dated about 1898. The monetary unit was still the "millieme", also used in Egypt. The design shows a camel postman delivering mail in the country, an ingen

Whole generation of Syrian children ‘might be lost’, senior humanitarian warns Security Council “Lack of funding comes with severe consequences”, Joyce Msuya told ambassadors, “including more drop-outs from school, higher malnutrition rates, and less protection interventions. If we do not act now, a generation of Syrian children might be lost. “It is critical that this Council shares responsibility for humanitarians’ life-saving work in Syria”, she said. The senior OCHA official and deputy emergency relief coordinator was briefing on the latest situation across Syria, along with Special Envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen , who told the Council that there were troubling signs of military escalation in recent months, and no sign of a revitalized peace process to finally end the war. Access to the needy Ms. Msuya added that all parties to Syria’s more than 11 year-long civil war have “an obligation to facilitate rapid and unimpeded humanitarian access to all civilians in need”, calling on t

  This is a market in one the more remote provinces in Afghanistan. The markets are full. The nutrition crisis here now is driven mainly by poverty. Other reasons too of course, but most families simply do not have money to buy available food. ⁦⁦⁦⁦ pic.twitter.com/BWkNaeLF6T — Melanie Galvin (@melgalvin01) August 29, 2022 Melanie Galvin is Chief of Nutrition, UNICEF Afghanistan

  I am honored to start a new mission with UNICEF in Romania and work together with @UNICEFRomania and @UNICEF_ECA teams for the well-being of every child. https://t.co/YEvUwQcwmA — Anna Riatti (@anna_riatti) August 29, 2022   Anna Riatti was previously the Deputy Representative of UNICEF in Italy and the Coordinator of the National Programme for Refugee and Migrant Children and Adolescents.

(AP Photo/Mohammad Sajjad) ( / AP) IBFAN Pakistan supports the Ministry of Health’s Call to Action to Ensure safer Infant and Young Child Feeding in Emergencies. Click HERE for Pakistan Ministry of Health IYCF-E Statement Following Pakistan’s unprecedented Monsoon flooding, IBFAN Pakistan is urging solidarity in supporting the call from Pakistan’s Ministry of Health for appropriate IYCF-E infant and young child feeding in emergencies. In order to avoid unnecessary disease outbreaks and deaths of children, the protection, promotion and support of breastfeeding and appropriate complementary feeding is critical. The agencies are warning that donations of unnecessary ultra-processed products, including formula, should not be distributed to vulnerable communities. During emergencies, disease and death rates among children under five are higher than for any other age group. The younger the infant, the higher the risk of death. Babies are at great risk of water-related diseases, with diarrh

Health care facilities are essential for reducing disease. Yet without basic water, sanitation, hygiene, waste management and cleaning (WASH) services to prevent and control infections, these places of healing can instead contribute to more disease, prolonged hospital stays and preventable deaths. According to the latest WHO/UNICEF JMP report , half of health care facilities around the world lack basic hygiene services (access to soap and water or alcohol-based hand rub at both points of care and at toilets) and 9 per cent have no hygiene services at all. © UNICEF/UN0646426/Das It is estimated that 3.85 billion people lack a basic hygiene service at their health care facility, including 688 million who receive care at facilities with no hygiene services at all. Furthermore, 1.7 billion people lack a basic water service at their health care facility, including 857 million people with no water service at all. Access the report Access the data Contaminated hands and environments play a

Afghans in Peril Once Again Date: August 31, 2021 Time: 1pm-2:15pm EST Award-winning author, journalist, and human rights activist Sally Armstrong will moderate a panel discussion on Afghanistan's perils and its people once again under Taliban rule. Panelists will discuss: - Aid delivery challenges and barriers in Afghanistan and the current humanitarian crisis - Resettlement of Afghans who have managed to reach Canada and the plight of those who remain behind - The Taliban's practices and policies in relation to women's rights in Islam Register Here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUuceGhrz0iGtG0_2_TwDKakCnrrRr25Flp

FYI.. Kul https://thehimalayantimes.com/nepal/kul-chandra-gautams-memoir-launched Kul Chandra Gautam's memoir launched - The Himalayan Times - Nepal's No.1 English Daily Newspaper | Nepal News, Latest Politics, Business, World, Sports, Entertainment, Travel, Life Style News KATHMANDU, AUGUST 28. Nepalaya, a book publication house, today launched Kul Chandra Gautam's memoir, the journey of a rural boy from Nepal's remote hills to the high office of the United Nations. thehimalayantimes.com

Dear friends, fyi and possible interest. Norah Niland, as some of you know and remember, was our UN colleague in Afghanistan and the Human Rights Advisor. in the late 1990s. As some of you also remember, Sippi was in Peshawar in the late 1990s when we were based there. At that time, she was working for the NRC. Both Norah and Sippi, like most of us, have remained engaged with Afghanistan in one way or another. Warm regards, Niloufar Dear Friends and Colleagues, As you may know, about a year ago, UAI, working jointly with the Costs of War project at BU initiated a major multi-stakeholder research study geared to determining the indirect consequences of 40+ years of warfare on Afghans and their society. Initial outputs included an annotated Bibliography and a paper on the impact of the different phases of the war on education. This major undertaking had to be put on hold given events leading up to the return of Taliban to Kabul last August. UAI focused instead on a dedicated campaign th