XUNICEF News and Views

Dear fellow members of XUNICEF, The gravity of the situation of children, women and families in Sudan is generating the Appeal, War and Food Insecurity in Sudan; A Call to Support Local Lifelines.

Editor's Note: The appeal appears below, but be sure to also read the background note by Mary Racelis which appears here.  War and Food Insecurity in Sudan A Call to Support Local Lifelines A Nation in Collapse: War and Displacement on an Unprecedented Scale

Announcement shared by Mary Racelis Dear Friends, Here is the Final CO-PEACE Concept Note, worked on by a stalwart core group over many months. Many of you have contributed to it at some point. We have dated it October 24 in commemoration of United Nations Day.

Attached is the final version of the co-peace concept note, drafted by Mary Racelis, with inputs from our team. I would like to request you to include it in the next issue of News and Views and on behalf of the team.

We congratulate our readers who are members of the CO-PEACE for Children Group on the launch of their excellent new website. Click here for the full website Below is part of the home page. Click above to explore the whole website.

I asked a query to AI and got the following response. We seem to be on the right track. I asked: How best to build alliances across the globe for peace and justice

Some of us who served in Jim Grant’s UNICEF will remember his truly ground-breaking Children as a Zone of Peace initiative. In conflict-ridden countries, CZOP gained fame in the 1990s and beyond as Corridors of Peace, Days of Tranquility, Bubbles of Child Protection or There is No Enemy Child. Coincidentally present in New York on 12 May were four of CZOP’s key advocates, now renamed by us, CO-PEACE, or CORRIDORS OF PEACE FOR CHILDREN EVERYWHERE. Rima Salah, David Bassiouni and Mary Racelis took the opportunity to welcome to New York chief promoter, Baquer Namazi. He was enjoying his first visit to the city after years of detention and house arrest in Tehran, followed by recovery in Dubai with son, Babak, and family. He remains actively engaged in seeking the release of son, Siamak, from his continuing unjust detention in the notorious Evin Prison. It was nonetheless a happy group that met at Rima’s elegant apartment near the UN. Helping Rima display the well-known Arab ho...

Dear Colleagues, It is our delight and honor to share with you the CO-PEACE Statement on Children and Armed Conflict drafted by our esteemed colleague, Mary Racelis (See below or click here). The Statement is the result of extensive consultations she undertook with a like-minded Core Group of X-UNICEF colleagues. Views of our friends and partners in the humanitarian sphere and civil society organizations were also sought. The Statement is a call for coordinated joint action with civil society organizations towards creating and maintaining effective Corridors of Peace to shelter and save children caught in armed conflict and give them the opportunity to survive and lead a productive life. We former UNICEF workers know how to do it, just as we did it with Jim Grant. Given your unrelenting commitment and dedication to the protection of children and mitigation of their sufferings from the ravages of armed conflict, further exacerbated by COVID-19, you can play a dynamic role in ending thi...