XUNICEF News and Views

  How UNICEF became the compromise In UNICEF we are rightly proud of the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the organisation in 1965. Less well known is how nearly it went elsewhere.  Gunnar Jahn - Chairman of the Nobel Committee 1965 Four of the five members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee wanted to give that year’s prize to the UN Secretary-General, U Thant. Their chairman, Gunnar Jahn, took a firm position opposing the award for U Thant.    The decision spared the Committee a public rupture, but left internal scars both in the Nobel Committee and in the UN. Looking back from today's vantage point, the decision also foreshadowed a growing tension between the UN's political and humanitarian arms—one that would soon become starkly visible in Nigeria/Biafra and Pakistan/Bangladesh. A long road to Oslo “No one keeps UNICEF going but the idea itself.” — Maurice Pate, declining the Norwegian proposal of 1960 to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize Over the years, friends an...

End games are often messy, and the end game for UNICEF's Mission in China was no exception. Only months earlier, UNICEF's experiment in training community health workers in Communist-controlled North China had seemed remarkably successful. UNICEF and the Chinese health authorities were planning to expand the programme. Yet by the end of 1949 the agreement that had made the programme possible would be abrogated by the government. What happened? Act I — Beijing, Early 1949 The Shijiazhuang Agreement was working well, and the first training course at the monastery near Shijiazhuang had gone well. Twenty graduates, including 11 men and 9 women, were now in the field. Both Dr. Leo Eloesser and Dr. Su Chin Kwan, CLARA's senior health official, were pleased with the results.

This is what aid cuts look like in Somalia - empty beds in a health centre, pregnant women and newborns unable to access healthcare.

The title does not refer to me, usually referred to as ‘Grumpy’, when I wake in the morning – though it could well do.

Recent Reader Comments Continously updated

Title: The boomerang effect: New pathways between Europe and Canada Author: Manuel Manrique Castro Publication: Manuel Manrique Castro on Substack Date: September 24, 2026

Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea Tracing one warm line through a land so wild and savage And make a Northwest Passage to the sea.

  In April 2021 I wrote a mini-series of four articles on UNICEF's early days in China. Rereading them recently, it seemed to me that I was missing a piece on Leo Eloesser who played such an important role in China but also in UNICEF's thinking on community medicine and primary health care. He only worked with UNICEF for a very short time—5 years—but they were momentous years for UNICEF and for him. In this article I write only about his history before and after UNICEF. The story of his brief period with UNICEF will come in the next article, The Shijiazhuang Strategy . One of the most interesting, colorful, and important characters in UNICEF's early history was Dr. Leo Eloesser. In what remains the best and most comprehensive book on UNICEF's history, The Children and the Nations , Maggie Black describes how the newly arrived first representative of UNICEF in China, Dr. Marcel Junod, recruited Eloesser from UNRRA to serve as his emissary to parts of China under...

This article tells the story of the Shijiazhuang Agreement of August 1948 and UNICEF's first attempt to switch from distribution of relief supplies to capacity building through training of community health workers and village midwives. The Idea Had History The idea was certainly not new.

Welding of Supporting Cylinder Steel Columns In 1999, while serving as Head of the Water and Sanitation Programme at UNICEF Iraq, we were approached by the Baghdad Sewage Authority with an urgent plea.

With the UN General Assembly starting this week here is an analysis of how the UN is being dismembered and its organs diminished by the very members which started it.

I have just finished reading Exit West by Mohsin Hamid. Hamid wrote it during the 2015 European refugee crisis and published it in 2017. It was clearly influenced by the Syrian crisis and that wave of migration. But Hamid leaves the country and time unnamed. The novel is about mass migration in general, a warning of the next, inevitable, and much larger wave, and that migration is a feature of today's world.

Some time agao, a  video in the XUNICEF blog reminded me of my motorcycle trips before and after my retirement.

In A Little History #8  I described the career of Dr. Marcel Junod before he joined UNICEF.  This article continues his story after arriving as UNICEF's first representative in China. Junod: February 1948 In February 1948, UNICEF's first Representative in China, Dr. Marcel Junod, arrived in the Nationalist capital, Nanjing. His wife and young son followed, arriving a couple of months later by ship via Manila.

The potential adverse effects of AI have been in the news for a few weeks.

Having been recruited by USAID to work in Albania during the Kosovo Crisis put me in an interesting position. 

Recently while organizing batches of photos, I noticed how some settings or objects appeared to look like photos from long ago

People have demonstrated unjustified trust in generative AI. Generative AI is inherently probabilistic—meaning it strings together likely patterns rather than verifying factual truths

The escalating global water crisis presents an immediate and severe threat to child survival, driven by the dangerous convergence of climate change, environmental degradation, and neglected infrastructure.

The search for the dead and missing continues, with the army taking a very active and effective lead-role.

Source - Wikipedia Emma Bonino, the prominent Italian rights activist and former European commissioner, has died at the age of 78. Celebrated for her pragmatism and unwavering dedication to her causes, she built unique alliances, including a close friendship with Pope Francis based on their mutual support for migrants.

For most of us, our names stay with us for life and for ever thereafter.

The title does not refer to real children, but the concept of “an oceanographic and climatological event”. It is unusual that a scientific phenomena was given the uncommon names of “El Niño” and “La Niña”

Have you ever wondered why our XUNICEF blog never annoys you with pop-ups or unwanted advertising?

This article from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) argues that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are failing not just due to a lack of money, but because the global economic architecture inherently reproduces structural inequalities.

Our wonderful CAFICS gathering on 3 September at the dear Sharif’s lovely home with ex-colleagues and friends from various UN agencies/countries & backgrounds.

Living all over the world for the last three to four decades, I have seen vastly different ways that people treat street animals.

GALILEO GALILEI       Many years ago when we were quite poor and my son had a surplus of air-miles, he was able to send us to Florence and made us millionaires. Those were the days of the lira before the Euro became the currency in Italy.

Gertrud Frankhauser In 1948, Gertrud Lutz-Frankhauser became UNICEF's first woman to head a country office—in today's terms, the first woman Representative. She had already led a life of humanitarian service during the war and would now go on to new challenges with UNICEF.

I recently posted a list of staff who moved from UNRRA to UNICEF ( UNRRA's human contributions to UNICEF ). The names in the list reminded several of our readers of former colleagues, most prominently Newton Bowles. In the following interview, Newton tells his own story.

This article presents an overview of the early career of Dr. Marcel Junod in the ICRC and how his experiences in World War II led to his appointment as UNICEF's first representative in China. An earlier version of this article, "The Doctor from Neuchâtel," appeared in March 2021 as the first in a four-part series on UNICEF's early years in China.

Some 40 years ago, I was working as a Peace Corps Volunteer in rural Liberia. One of the first surprises I came across was huge piles of discarded, used, "donated" clothes from America

  In a world debating whether smartphones are "electronic drugs" or a teenager's last refuge for freedom, how can families navigate the digital invasion?

Exactly 50 years ago, in September 1976, Ross Coggins published his poem "The Development Set". Ross Coggins was a missionary and development worker. He passed away in 2011.  Given the golden jubilee of the poem, I thought it fitting to re-introduce it to our community. You may ponder about its relevance today:

In August of 2003, the XUNICEF - WAWIG - Group met in Edinburgh, organized by Paul and Katherine Ignatieff. It was the time of the famous International Festival, so in addition to pleasant get togethers with former colleagues

Our friend and colleague Leo Goulet has just sent in a detailed sitrep on the actual situation in one of the affected areas of Nepal:

A few months ago Nadia and I had dinner at the Cafe de Paris in Geneva. This venerable establishment has been in operation from the 1930's

Have you ever been in a pickle where you had to "steal" information to correct a wrong?

Dear Fouad & colleagues, The apocalyptic deluge in Nepal has many of us stunned, dazed and incredibly dismayed.

  Dear Colleagues, As you have heard there has been a disaster in the northern part of Nepal bordering China with a torrent of rain and debris which has swept thousands of houses, schools, health posts and the Hydropower.

A torrent of water, mud and debris swept away entire communities in Nepal on 26 August 2026, killing hundreds and leaving hundreds more missing.

The story of UNICEF's first Executive Director tells us much about the origins from which the organization was born and the atmosphere established by two terrible world wars.

Some useful information related to our diets. And my Ditty to go with…. Is it lettuce or lentil ? And don’t forget the dill,

GAUNT BEAST The time - 1986/87, and a trip on home leave from Quetta.

Technology taking over cognition? Outsourcing is a common practice in manufacturing. Thousands of industries have been outsourcing production of their goods

  "The UNICEF statute was drawn up with great foresight. From the beginning the Charter's text contained not only the word 'aid' - essentially an emergency measure - but also 'development',

Recently I saw a photo of a beach in Maine covered completely by - it looked like copper plates. I then remembered, “Donkey years ago” (as they say here in the Virgin Islands),

"We went into an improvised hospital somewhere in Italy where ill children were being treated. The stench was so terrible in the children's ward that we had to cover our mouths and noses while we filmed. We took turns going outside to vomit. (While we filmed) three children died. We found conditions like this in many countries. This was a heartbreaking film to make." — Captain David Miller As the war in Europe drew to a close in the spring of 1945, the U.S. Army produced one final documentary. Unlike earlier wartime productions designed to rally support for the troops, this film aimed to make the case for sustained U.S. engagement in war-ravaged nations and generate support for UNRRA. Like earlier propaganda, the film highlighted Axis tyranny, but unlike others, it turned its lens on the human aftermath of conflict—specifically the plight of millions of destitute children. Seeds of Destiny was released in July 1946 with a special screening at the Whit...