What was your last assignment with UNICEF?
UNICEF Representative, Mozambique
How old do you feel?
An out-of-shape 25 years old
Where do you live?
I divide my time between an apartment in The Hague and a house on the beach in Kommetjie south of Cape Town
What book do you currently read?
Jon Kalman Stefansson “Fish have no feet”. This Icelandic writer joins hands with Hilary Mantel and Gabriel Garcia Marquez as the very best writers in my literary universe.
If you could travel without restrictions, where would you go?
Iceland and Greenland
Your best experience with UNICEF?
The widespread adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Your biggest challenge when working for UNICEF?
Turn the CRC into an actual change agent for children, reduce UNICEF’s change reluctance and spend less time in front of computer screens.
What is your biggest fear, in relation to the future of children?
I hope that my biggest fear is everybody’s biggest fear – that there will be no future for our children and their children. Climate change, global warming, and environmental degradation combined with poverty, hunger and human conflict bring us closer to the edge of disaster than the world’s children have ever been before.
What is your greatest hope, in relation to children?
It is real hard to feel realistic hope. Hope must have children and young people as its foundation – our generation has blown it and we must empower our children and young people to lead the fight.
What is your one piece of advice you wish to give to the UNICEF Executive Director:
I have been associated with UNICEF since 1982. It is my opinion that “my” UNICEF did better during the first 20 years than during the immediately past 20 years. I think that this is largely because of the focus UNICEF embraced after the 1979 International Year of the Child. When UNICEF conceptualized and launched the Child Survival and Development Revolution (CSDR) and built it with simple, doable components like the use of Growth Charts, the universalization of Oral Rehydration Therapy to reduce death from diarrhoea, the global advocacy for exclusive Breastfeeding during the infant’s first 6 months, and Universal Immunization against vaccine preventable diseases (GOBI), the respect for and efficiency of UNICEF’s global agenda probably reached a peak that the organization probably has never come close to again. My advice to UNICEF’s Executive Director would therefore be: back to basics. Focus and prioritize. Don’t try to be everything to everybody. Intervene where UNICEF can make a real difference for children.
Jesper can be reached under jmorch@me.com
You are a very wise man, Jesper. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
ReplyDeleteI fully agree with Bernt ... Jesper's combination of realism and idealism for children today is resonant and refreshing. Thank you, Jesper.
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks for the pointer to Icelandic literature!