XUNICEF Canada Team Participates in UNICEF Canada Event : Niloufar Pourzand

Resetting the Geopolitical table: Global Shifts and Humanitarian Action in a New, Polycrisis World

I attended as a Guest Speaker at the above event today. I had suggested and UNICEF Canada also invited Mahboob Shareef, Mahendra Sheth, Aziz Froutan and Natalie Zend - all former UNICEF colleagues. It was very good that they kindly came and were able to interact with the UNICEF Canada team and make contributions to the discussion. There were about 50 attendees from CSOs, the UNICEF Canada Board and team as well as representatives of the private sector.

The objective of the meeting was to generate greater engagement and interest in the work of UNICEF amongst this potential/existing supporters and allies of UNICEF Canada and UNICEF’s work. There were four main Guest Speakers - whose inputs were professionally moderated by UNICEF Canada’s new CEO, Sevaun Palvetzian Other than myself, there was a UNICEF Canada speaker (Theirry Delvigne-Jean), Global Chief Sustainability at Manulife (Sarah Chapman) and Director, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy (Peter Lawson).

We were asked our thoughts about the impact of climate change, the role of AI, corporate social responsibility, education, gender equality, nutrition, water etc. in the context of a changing world and polycrisis. This was followed with a discussion with the audience and questions on funding, forgotten crisis, interconnectedness of social issues and the way forward.

Also last week I had attended a meeting at York U of a new Network called the One Health M&E Network for Canada, Africa and Latin America. One Health is a concept espoused by WHO and others for some time now - referring to the links between human and animal health and well-being as well as other social/economic and political indicators. This group within the Global Health Programme at York University hopes to pull together existing work and contribute to a stronger evidence-base as the world faces greater challenges. In their own words:

"Recent disease outbreaks have highlighted the devastating impact of climate change, environmental degradation, zoonotic infection, and anthropogenic activities that are exacerbated by a range of socio-economic factors. Without robust monitoring and evaluation systems that attend to the clinical, anthropological, and legal dimensions of addressing these issues and establishing clear duty-sharing responsibilities, we are unlikely to weather the oncoming global health crises.”

I hope that your readers will find this information interesting and if anyone wants to know about either of these meetings - they are welcome to write to me.

I will share some photos as well.

Best wishes, Niloufar