Linkedin article shared by Niloufar Pourzand May 25, 2025 The late James P. Grant, the former head of UNICEF and the greatest children’s advocate ever, was fond of saying: “No one can say no to children.” In the early 1980s, Grant and his allies launched the “child survival and development revolution,” putting the needs, rights, and well-being of children on the world stage as never before. This global effort, which included an unprecedented immunization campaign, is estimated to have saved the lives of 25 million children during Grant’s tenure at UNICEF and tens of millions more after his death in 1995. It also put the idea of humanitarian ceasefires into widespread practice; spurred the creation of the Millennium Development Goals and, in turn, the Sustainable Development Goals; propelled mass ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child; and completely altered the face of international development. At the center of it was a simple moral imperative: Put children first. A...