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After nearly a decade of  civil war in Syria  — a prolonged crisis that has caused social, political and economic turmoil, with disastrous effects on millions of lives — the first question that parents ask when they encounter an aid worker, according to  Fran Equiza , UNICEF's representative in Syria, is this: What about my child's education? "I was visiting a family living in Ghouta, 24 hours after an attack," Equiza told UNICEF USA. "The brother-in-law had been killed and the son was in bed with a head wound after a wall fell on him. The mother pulled me aside and asked, 'When are my kids going to be back in school?'" That this is top of mind for parents — at a time when 80 percent of the population is living below the poverty line— says a lot, Equiza said. "You don’t send your kids to school unless you think there is hope for them. The Syrian people are some of the most resilient people I have ever met.”  Yousef, 10, of embattled Homs, Syria,...

Read the article in Education Week There are at least 258 million children under the age of 17 who are not going to school—and only 49 percent completing secondary education. In addition, about 770 million adults are illiterate, most of them women, Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed told the U.N. General Assembly on the International Day of Education. ... one reason why the situation is “so grave” today is that there are 75 million children in crisis-affected countries who are unable to go to school, have their education disrupted, and don’t attain any educational standards. Yasmine Sherif, director of Education Can’t Wait which is the first global fund dedicated to education in emergencies, told a news conference at the U.N.: “Just think what will happen with this generation, and with all of us one day, if these 75 million children don’t access a proper, decent quality and continued education,” she said.

Read the full article and enjoy the photos in Forbes  Jinka, Omo Valley, Ethiopia: The blue eyes of this street boy of  the Ari tribe are probably a genetic mutation. PHOTO: TREVOR COLE, IRELAND - TPOTY Overall Winner, Young Shepherd, Fada-Ngourma, Burkina Faso  PHOTO: KATY GOMEZ CATALINA, SPAIN - TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR TPOTY

The European Investment Bank (EIB) and UNICEF today announced a new partnership aimed at increasing access to quality education and reducing the impact of climate change on children. Under a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by EIB Group President Werner Hoyer and UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore, the two institutions committed to jointly investing in quality education and skills training for the most vulnerable children. EIB and UNICEF will also scale-up community-based climate adaptation initiatives in schools and health facilities. Nicolas Schmit, Commissioner for Jobs and Social Rights, said: “The social agenda of this European Commission aims for a more certain future for our children and young people. We want to protect them from poverty and make sure they have access to the skills and training they need to navigate the green and digital transitions. Nobody should be left behind. I welcome today’s agreement between the EIB and UNICEF which captures that very same e...

Credit: Academia.edu The Morals of the Market Human Rights and the Rise of Neoliberalism By Jessica Whyte Published 11.05.2019 Verso 278 Pages Available on Amazon  Read the review on LARB The destructive legacy that Whyte so eloquently describes suggests that the convergence between neoliberals and rights practitioners has defanged human rights from any truly emancipatory potential. Formal rights without the redistribution of wealth and the democratization of economic power, as we have learned not only from the ongoing struggles of postcolonial states but also from the growing inequality in the Global North, simply do not lead to justice. So if the objectives of a utopian imagination include equitable distribution of resources and actual sovereignty of the people, we urgently need a new vocabulary of resistance and novel methods of struggle.

Dear colleagues, As an organization, we continue our commitment to living UNICEF's values in 2020, to emphasize ethical awareness and behaviours, and to cultivate a culture of ethics and integrity, which also includes the values of independence and impartiality. With respect to the latter, we in the Ethics Office often receive queries regarding the extent to which UNICEF personnel may participate in political activities. Today's message is intended to help us better understand and remind us of the scope of permissible political activities, as UNICEF personnel and as international civil servants. UN Staff Regulation 1.2 recognizes that while "staff members' personal views and convictions, remain inviolable, staff members must ensure that those views and convictions do not adversely affect their official duties or the interests of the United Nations". All of us are therefore required to conduct ourselves at all times in a manner befitting our status as internationa...

Credit: BBC The Guardian: World Bank urged to scrap $500m loan to Tanzania over schoolgirls' rights concerns. Read the full article in the Guardian Under John Magufuli, who became president in 2015, the government has forced girls to undergo pregnancy tests and excluded thousands of them from school, said the letter. The government was also accused of encouraging the flogging of schoolchildren, clamping down on  family planning services  and branding them a western “plot” to reduce the population, and ignoring multiple cases of rape and murder of women in western Tanzania. Approving the loan would deliver a “slap in the face” to women and girls, and would represent a “full-throated endorsement of this violently misogynist regime”, said the organisations.

Credit: KFGO Read Human Rights Watch Statement Read or download the full report at bottom of this page Rwandan authorities are seeking to formalize their abusive arrests and detention of some of the country’s most vulnerable children under the pretense of rehabilitating them, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The Geneva-based United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, which starts its review of Rwanda on January 27, 2020, should call for the immediate closure of Gikondo Transit Center, where children are arbitrarily detained and abused. “Rwandan authorities claim they are rehabilitating street children,” said Lewis Mudge , Central Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “But instead, they are locking them up in inhuman and degrading conditions, without due process, and exposing them to beatings and abuse. Under legislation introduced since 2017,people exhibiting “deviant behaviors … such as prostitution, drug use, begging, vagrancy, [or] informal street vend...

Following on from the special edition of the newsletter dedicated to artists, I'm attaching a flyer for my Extremadura Spain painting workshop. I was wondering if this could be inserted into the next edition of the newsletter so that potential budding "painters in retirement" get to hear about it. You could give everyone my email - peterldelahaye@hotmail.com - for enquiries. Many thanks and w arm regards, Peter

Remembering Jim Grant on the 25th anniversary of his passing away today.  I am in Bhutan attending and addressing a South Asian religious leaders forum on child rights co-sponsored by UNICEF and Arigatou International. I took the occasion to reminisce about JPG's leadership in fostering a strong partnership with religious leaders in support of child survival and development.  JPG continues to inspire us even from up in heaven.  https://www.forbes.com/sites/unicefusa/2020/01/27/taking-a-page-from-former-unicef-executive-director-jim-grants-revolutionary-playbook/#587462cd6ada UNICEF USA BrandVoice: Taking A Page From Former UNICEF Executive Director Jim Grant's Revolutionary Playbook - forbes.com On the 25th anniversary of his death, we look to the visionary UNICEF leader's past successes as we fight today's most pressing children's crises. Former UNICEF Executive Director James P ... www.forbes.com

Read the article in Forbes Taking A Page From Former UNICEF Executive Director Jim Grant’s Revolutionary Playbook On the 25th anniversary of his death, we look to the visionary UNICEF leader’s past successes as we fight today’s most pressing children’s crises. Former UNICEF Executive Director James P. "Jim" Grant shares a book with a boy at a community center near Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. © UNICEF/UNI49615/PIROZZI1994 You may not know the name Jim Grant, but you know his work. Through his career in international development, and especially as UNICEF's Executive Director from 1980 to 1995, James P. "Jim" Grant excelled at mobilizing global support around problems that were paradoxically daunting and simple at the same time — particularly child mortality and global vaccine coverage. Through what he dubbed the " child survival revolution ," Grant and UNICEF pressed world leaders and rallied communities around these common causes, with extraordinary res...

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The shock of Pete's loss is immense. Typically, he was working with some of the most "fragile" States to develop true access to Primary Health Care for the most vulnerable. He had just returned from Somalia. His history of mentoring is immense. I recall meeting him for the first time in Afghanistan in the early 2000s and he was investing enormous time bringing UNICEF's national staff up to speed, particularly the newly recruited women health staff. Later, when he came to New York as UNICEF's Head of Health after having been seconded to PEPFAR he brought in much of the fine epidemiological skills he had honed over the years as well as his passion for getting sound evidence and using it. An excellent colleague and one willing to challenge existing ways of doing things and proposing alternative, and almost always better ways. More recently his Ebola work during the West African outbreak 5 years ago put the other diseases from which children were dying firmly on the m...

Angela Raven Roberts Greetings sisters and brothers world wide. I am still incredulous about what has happened. I join and mourn with you all who remember him in so many ways and from so may encounters. I am sharing with you what I sent to EMOPS. I spent many years working with Peter and with Annalies on developing training for emergency response, translating his evaluations and reports, formulating them into key humanitarian principles and actions.As a person, as a professional, he will be missed. Best regards and love Angela To all dear friends and colleagues at EMOPS, UNICEF and the humanitarian sector world wide. I join you in the grieving and questioning over the untimely passing of friend, colleague, mentor and pioneer Peter. Many hundreds of people world wide are still reeling as the news of his passing is reaching the field far and wide. In such a short cut life Peter was able to build such a wide network of friends and colleagues and his influence and contributions to deep e...

The India Mark II Editor's Note:  We are grateful to Augustine Veliath and UPGI Link for passing on the following news sent by Rupert Talbot. Read also Maggie Black's The Handpump Cometh See also Wikipedia's page India Mark II ......   Rupert Talbot "I regret to inform you of the death from lung cancer, of our former Water Section colleague Ken Mcleod, on January 23rd, 2020, aged 88, in Cairns, Australia. Ken led the development programme for the India MK II hand pump from 1974 - 1978. He initiated contact with the pioneering NGO community in Maharashtra that made improved hand pumps upon which the MK II was subsequently based; and he coordinated the design and manufacture of the first MK II hand pumps at Richardson and Cruddas in Madras. Ken was also instrumental, together with Gerry Lyckholm of Supply Section, with introducing third party quality assurance procedures for hand pump manufacture which became the cornerstone of hand pump production across the country an...

UNICEF's Board of Directors announced that  Michael J. Nyenhuis  has been selected as the organization's new president and CEO. The announcement follows the departure of  Caryl Stern  earlier this month.  Nyenhuis will take up his new position on 30 March 2020. Before becoming president and CEO of Americares, a position he has held since 2014, Nyenhuis was CEO of the global nonprofit MAP International for 13 years. A former journalist with a passion for global health, he previously served on USAID's Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid and chaired the board of the Integral Alliance, a global network of faith-based NGOs. He also currently serves on the board of InterAction, the largest coalition of U.S.-based relief and development organizations working internationally, and the leadership council at Concordia, an organization and forum that promotes cross-sector partnerships for social impact. A Minnesota native, Nyenhuis holds a Masters in Business A...

UNICEF wanted straight walls on the tent to add more interior space, even though angled sides are stronger; it also wanted the new design to be sturdy in winds as fast as 74 miles an hour, something that some manufacturers said wasn’t possible. The final design used several tweaks to become stronger, including improvements in how the tent is anchored in the ground, the quality of the tent’s frame, and the position of guy ropes. (When the tents were eventually tested in a wind tunnel, they withstood hurricane-level winds.) On hot days, the tent stays cooler because of large mosquito-net-covered windows on opposing sides that improve airflow. Outside, a second layer above the roof, called a shade net, helps deflect the sun and creates a wind tunnel that blows air down into the tent. In a heavy storm, the shade net is designed to also prevent rain or snow from building up and collapsing the tent. For colder climates, it has a winter liner that can be added to keep it insulated. Video: Cli...

We wish you all the best for 2020 and 4717 - the Chinese Year of the White Metallic Rat. Stay well and enjoy each day! Cheers, Isabel and Horst.

Dr. Peter Salama (RIP) See the collection of photos of Peter Salama so far received.  If you have others to add, please let us know. Tributes: UNICEF “The entire UNICEF family is deeply saddened by the sudden death of Dr. Peter Salama from a heart attack in Geneva. “Pete was a tireless advocate for children, a committed humanitarian and a highly respected professional. “He was an inspiring and caring leader across a number of roles within UNICEF, as Chief of Health and Nutrition in Afghanistan, as Representative in Ethiopia and Zimbabwe, as Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa in Jordan, as Global Chief of Health and HIV and as Global Ebola Coordinator in New York. “Pete left UNICEF in 2016 to join the World Health Organization as Executive Director of its Health Emergencies Programme before becoming Executive Director of its Division of Universal Health Coverage - Life Course. “All of us who had the privilege of working with Pete knew that he embodied the spirit...