Protecting Children in Crisis, An Interview with Catherine Russell : Melissa Fleming / Awake at Night
“Children just want to be children. No matter what, the bleakest situation, the most terrible things, they still want to play right? They want to find some joy. They want to just be kids, and I think that's what we have to all work to protect.”
2024 was one of the worst years on record for children in conflict, a devastating statistic that the United Nations is refusing to accept as a deadly new normal. In this episode*, Catherine Russell reflects on the impacts of childhood trauma, the limits of human resilience, and looks back on a childhood spent trick-or-treating for UNICEF.Catherine Russell.
This must rank among the worst interview ever by a head of a UN agency. The full interview symbolizes why trust in UN agencies is at an all-time low. Totally free of content; no analysis, no sense of strategy nor vision, not even an explanation what UNICEF is trying to do. Hardly any sentence gets finished. Russel is unable to pick up the clues given to her by Fleming (head of the United Nations Department of Global Communications since 2019). I also cannot fathom why Fleming decides to put this online. If you can read faster than listening to the ramble, click here for the transcript of the interview.
ReplyDeleteThe Executive Board, meeting from 4th February, is unlikely to affect any change in leadership or management, as it will be busy, inter alia, approving (on a no objection basis) the new Iraq country programme, where the UNICEF office will be spending more than 77 percent of Regular Resources on itself – euphemistically called programme effectiveness.