XUNICEF News and Views

What is your name and your last assignment with UNICEF? Rob Carr - Chief of Planning, Monitoring and Reporting, UNICEF Pacific (multi-country office based in Suva, Fiji)

Dear XUNICEF team, March 2026 rapidly is coming to an end. End of tenure. With my latest effort in painting flowers in oil on canvas I wish to thank you for msny years of your immensely appreciated devotion to keep us XUNICEF readers abreast of those events that are locked closest in our hearts.

Life after UNICEF can be pretty sweet. If you happened to be traveling or hiking or visiting grandkids or just tuned out of XUNICEF in March - there was alot going on.

Everyone was excited as we reconnect ourselves through a get-together with UNICEF retirees in Japan. Where have they been hiding? Even cherry blossoms agreed to full blossoming to celebrate the reunion

Dear colleagues: UPDATE :  At the end of March we sent out an email request to XUNICEF members to share your response to 10 QUESTIONS.

What is your last assignment with UNICEF? Chief of supply and Logistics Nigeria

What IS YOUR NAME and your last assignment with UNICEF? Blanca Luz Gomez Diaz (ex Blanca San German) - Supplies & Logistics Officer in UNICEF Lifeline for Haiti (major earthquake), based in the Dominican Republic in 2010.

What IS YOUR NAME and your last assignment with UNICEF? Ramesh Shrestha Representative, Myanmar (Burma)

What IS YOUR NAME and your last assignment with UNICEF? Suresh Kishanrao, Program Officer -Health, UNICEF India Country Office

What IS YOUR NAME and your last assignment with UNICEF? Aboubacry Tall

What IS YOUR NAME and your last assignment with UNICEF? Niloufar Pourzand, Chief of Field Office, UNICEF Uttar Pradesh, India

What IS YOUR NAME and your last assignment with UNICEF? Marta Maurás Regional Director TACRO

What IS YOUR NAME and your last assignment with UNICEF?    Saman Al Rasheed

Dear colleagues, Stephen’s passing brought to mind our conversations in the early 1990s when I was drafting the Executive Director‘s speeches and Stephen was preparing his own speeches as UNICEF Special Representative.

In the mid-1990s, while I was working for EMOPS, the civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia were raging. A cholera outbreak had hit a refugee camp in Sierra Leone, and I was dispatched to Freetown to support the office, conduct field missions to "hot spots," and coordinate with government and donors. After a series of bush flights and helicopter hops, I found myself in Kenema—a diamond-mining town where rebels and government forces fought bitterly for control of the mines. Just outside town was a camp holding thousands of Liberians who had fled their own civil war, only to find themselves trapped in a new one. I was there with a senior EMOPS colleague and a cholera expert from the CDC. As we met with the camp leaders to discuss the outbreak, the atmosphere was chaotic. Suddenly, one of the elder leaders froze, looked at me, and shouted,   "Robert Carr! Robert Carr!" He made a distinct Liberian gesture—pointing his index finger at his eye and then at me:   “I wanna s...

What IS YOUR NAME and your last assignment with UNICEF? Olalekan Ajia. Communication for Development Specialist, UNICEF Nigeria

What IS YOUR NAME and your last assignment with UNICEF? Nuzhat Shahzadi I was heading UNICEF-Kiribati and the UN Joint Presence Office, UNICEF Pacific (under EAPRO). I was based in Tarawa, Kiribati for almost 4 years. The isolation was too much so I decided to quit. HR termed it as "early retirement."

UNICEF Representative in Zimbabwe, Etona Ekole, posted this about XUNICEF reunion on LINKED IN (reproduced here for those not on LINKEDIN):

This in my view, is a perfect park bench. Look at that view!   A favorite spot to pause when walking our dog, this park bench is in Queen Elizabeth Park just north of Wellington in New Zealand. Hard to imagine that more than 80 years ago this area was the home to more than 16,000 United States Marines training to retake Islands across the Pacific in the Second World War. Sadly 10 Marines died on the beach in front of this bench during a beach landing drill. Ten of the more than 7500 Marines who were killed in the Pacific during that War.

So it was that following some work in Nepal in 1979, where I ran into a number of VSO volunteers, that I felt compelled to visit the Head Office of VSO in London on my return to discuss my observations.

I join many former UNICEF staff members in expressing profound sorrow at the passing of Stephen Lewis - a friend, colleague, mentor, and fellow Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF. I first learned about Stephen Lewis in the 1980s when he was the Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations. He was a fervent multilateralist and a staunch believer in the principles and ideals of the United Nations. I recall reading a memorable speech he delivered in defense of the UN, in which he said that even if the rest of the UN were useless - which, of course, it was not - the actions and achievements of UNICEF alone would justify its raison d'être.   There was tremendous mutual admiration between Lewis and the then UNICEF Executive Director, James Grant, and Deputy Executive Director, Richard Jolly. Whenever UNICEF needed an inspiring speaker to support its advocacy for child survival and development, Grant and Jolly often turned to Ambassador Lewis. Jolly once remarked that Stephen Lewis was po...

(dp/New York/Bonn) 1 April 2026 . In a landmark decision, the UN General Assembly has determined that the next Secretary-General shall be a non-binary person, thereby stepping around a long-standing stalemate.