Chapter Two- UNICEF

UNICEF USA: Official Site - Help UNICEF Save Children's Lives!

www.unicefusa.org

 

 

UNICEF is vital to the future of the world’s children.

 

2012 brought powerful achievements for children, declining poverty rates, and nearly eradicated polio with the overall increase of all immunizations. Now more girls attend school, and families gained improved access to clean water and nutrition. With more children surviving and thriving beyond their fifth birthdays than ever before, UNICEF did well.

 

168 governments and 400+ representatives from civil society and faith-based organizations pledged to “The Committing to Child Survival”. This program focuses on giving every child the best possible start in life.

 

With UNICEF being all-inclusive, everyone’s participation limits differences in politics and religion from slowing the rate of gain. All over the globe, UNICEF works with everyone, and their synergy is a powerful weapon against poverty.

 

UNICEF responding to 286 humanitarian emergencies in 79 countries confirms the synergetic super power they wield. For instance, they provided 19 million people with access to clean water, and treated more than 920,000 children under the age of five who were suffering from severe acute malnutrition in the Sahel. In 2012, nine countries in the Sahel – Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, the Gambia, Mali, Mauritania, the Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal suffered major nutritional crises agitated by flooding, cholera, and population displacement and conflict in Mali.

 

In Syria UNICEF and partners supplied vaccines to more than 1.4 million children against measles, and delivered winter provisions, medicines, and non-food items to more than 263,000 people while educating 79,000 children. As time passed, the danger to UNICEF, and its partners grew along with the number of refugees. Today Syria is a danger zone in a region known for unrest and populated by many people in need of help, lifesaving assistance.

 

Total UNICEF revenue by source and funding type, 2012

RR: Regular resources, OR- Other resources

 42% Governments RR: $601 million   15% Governments OR: $1,670 million

17% Private sector and non-governmental organizations OR: $678 million

15% Private sector and non-governmental organizations RR: $583 million

9%   Inter-organizational arrangements    OR: $350 million

2 % Other income RR: $76 million (UNICEF National Committees raised $29.8 million in 2012, which contributed to providing life-saving treatment to more than 920,000 severely malnourished children under five.)

 

The annual expenditure was $3,866,000,000 in 2012.

 

With the advanced, yet simple technology of cell phones UNICEF reduced turnaround time by half for medical test results. For AIDS, and many other diseases, tracking and treating contagions is simplified and improved, having miraculous impact on mortality rates. In Zambia, a RapidSMS (‘texting’) application transmits infant HIV test results from central laboratories in two main cities to all rural health facilities.

 

Innovation is prominent as plenty of effort is given for new ways to micro-manage the challenges faced. With new studies showing the precise areas to apply the work for optimal results, innovation is maximizing efficiency.

 

Enabling real-time monitoring of bottlenecks and barriers in programmatic work the new application MoRES is helping UNICEF and its partners to improve policies, and systems to target interventions that will lead to improved results.

 

In Guatemala MoRES was used to identify obstacles to school enrollment and causes for dropout, including low levels of parental involvement, inadequate materials, and poor education quality and child hunger.

 

In 2012, MoRES was applied in more than 30 countries across all geographic regions, using different entry points, depending on the national context. Analysis of these experiences found three key factors: broad partnerships involving a range of actors, including governments, multilateral and bilateral organizations and civil society; the use of innovative technologies for monitoring and program adjustments; in this work efficiency saves lives.

 

Social media bolstered the efforts of UNICEF and its numerous partners in raising funds and awareness of children’s issues. Through its global Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube platforms, as well as social media presence in several countries, UNICEF kept the world connected to the pressing needs of children.

 

Across the Sahel belt of Africa, an estimated 1.1 million children under age 5 were at risk of severe acute malnutrition in 2012. In April, UNICEF launched Sahel NOW, a campaign to create global awareness of the impending crisis. For the first time ever, National Committees and UNICEF offices united to engage in social media as the primary medium of communication for advocacy and fundraising. The campaign mobilized UNICEF Goodwill Ambassadors at national and global levels to alert the world that converging conditions were threatening the nutritional status of children.

 

Targeted immunization campaigns as part of integrated health services have been effective in controlling childhood diseases, such as measles and polio in February 2012; India was removed from the WHO list of polio-endemic countries after completing one year without any cases. This came a mere three years after the country had contributed to nearly half of the world’s polio cases.

 

During 2012, Mozambique scaled up integrated community case management

of childhood illnesses, which UNICEF supports, and implemented a child health week that provided vitamin A supplements, polio immunizations, and worming treatment to some 4 million children. Health campaigns included indoor residual spraying to prevent malaria in 53 districts (and protecting about 8.5 million people) and helping control a cholera outbreak in the country. Fewer than 800 cholera cases resulted in 2012. A similar outbreak in 2009 resulted in 20,000 cases of the disease.

 

Integrated health campaigns helped save children’s lives. In Djibouti, UNICEF and the Government immunized more than 90,000 children under age 5 against measles also providing vitamin A supplementation, worming, and long-lasting insecticide-treated mosquito nets to prevent malaria. As part of this effort, 75 per cent of children with severe acute malnutrition, some17, 000 children, received ready-to-use therapeutic foods. With help from UNICEF, Tajikistan conducted two rounds of immunization against diphtheria and provided 900,000 children under age 5 with vitamin A. Some 30,000 children under age 2 and 18,000 pregnant women received micronutrient supplementation

 

In 2012, UNICEF supported community based management of acute malnutrition in more than 65 countries and reached over 1.9 million children under age 5 with life-saving treatment. Infant and young child feeding remained a pillar of UNICEF’s strategy to prevent malnutrition, including the promotion of breastfeeding. In 2012, with UNICEF support, at least 76 per cent of households in 69 countries used iodized salt.

 

With UNICEF support, approximately 29.5 million children were registered at birth in about 80 countries. UNICEF’s work in the Democratic Republic of the Congo prioritized birth registration and saw more than 350,500 children registered during 2012. In Belize, the Make Your Child Count multiplatform campaign brought birth registration to communities located far from traditional service points As a result, the country is nearing universal birth registration, and it is anticipated that the last 10 per cent of disadvantaged boys and girls will soon gain access to education, health care and other essential services that come with the registration of their births.

 

Major developments for strengthening data collection, analysis and dissemination took place in 2012

 

UNICEF is the lead United Nations agency in reporting on the child-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and provides rigorous analysis of multiple streams of data, with support from inter-agency groups. UNICEF contributes data that are used to measure progress towards 17 of 44 MDG indicators.

 

Weather extremes and natural disasters required prompt responses to avert mass casualties. For the third consecutive year, Pakistan was inundated with floods that affected some 5 million people. Immediately UNICEF began to reach more than 250,000 people daily with safe drinking water in the flood-affected provinces of Baluchistan, Punjab and Sindh. During the three-month peak of the emergency, some 500,000 people were provided with safe drinking water each day.

 

In 2012, UNICEF support helped provide more than 18.8 million people in humanitarian emergencies around the globe with access to safe water.

 

Typhoon Bopha in December 2012 entailed the distribution of 45,000 water and hygiene kits and water tanking in 39 sites, reaching more than 113,000 people. As 2012 came to a close, UNICEF joined the Government in assessing the typhoon’s damage and began the process of restoring safe water and sanitation, education, nutrition and child protection services.

 

Mali, suffering from an ongoing nutrition crisis, had a tenuous situation deteriorate even further when the country became involved in armed conflict. More than 2.8 million people were affected, including 560,461 school age children. In 2012, some 350,000 people in northern Mali fled their homes for safety in the south or to neighboring countries.

 

Throughout its history, UNICEF has delivered results for children through collaborative relationships with a broad range of actors, including governments, the multilateral system, civil society organizations, the private sector and global program partners. In 2012, UNICEF expanded its Strategic Framework for Partnerships and Collaborative Relationships in consideration of changes in the development landscape that affect the ways in conducting business.

 

The decrease over the past two decades in the global number of under-five deaths from about 12 million in 1990 to about 6.9 million in 2012 is the most dramatic statistic, saving five million children a year through generations of effort is an incredible feat.

 

Unique to UNICEF are 36 National Committees: independent, local NGOs that raise funds and advocate for children’s UNICEF’s revenue in 2012 that came from private sector contributions. An important fundraising tool has been the use of Premium Short Message Service (PSMS) in which people can donate to UNICEF through text messaging. Their fundraising efforts contributed to UNICEF’s success in fulfilling the ‘3 in 3 campaign’ to recruit 3 million active pledge donors over a three-year period, reaching the goal a full six months earlier than the target date of 31 December 2012. Efforts led to a record-breaking pledge income of $555 million in 2012. National Committees played a vital role in securing the nearly one third of

 

UNICEF National Committees

Andorran Committee for UNICEF

Australian Committee for UNICEF Limited

Austrian Committee for UNICEF

Belgian Committee for UNICEF

Canadian UNICEF Committee

Czech Committee for UNICEF

Danish Committee for UNICEF

Estonian National Committee for UNICEF

Finnish Committee for UNICEF

French Committee for UNICEF

German Committee for UNICEF

Hellenic National Committee for UNICEF

Hong Kong Committee for UNICEF

UNICEF Hungarian Committee Foundation

Icelandic National Committee for UNICEF

UNICEF Ireland

Israeli Fund for UNICEF

Italian Committee for UNICEF

Japan Committee for UNICEF

Korean Committee for UNICEF

Lithuanian National Committee for UNICEF

Luxembourg Committee for UNICEF

Dutch Committee for UNICEF

New Zealand National Committee for UNICEF

Norwegian Committee for UNICEF

Polish National Committee for UNICEF

Portuguese Committee for UNICEF

National Committee for UNICEF of San Marino

Slovak Committee for UNICEF

Slovenian Committee for UNICEF

Spanish Committee for UNICEF

Swedish Committee for UNICEF

Swiss Committee for UNICEF

Turkish National Committee for UNICEF

United Kingdom Committee for UNICEF

United States Fund for UNICEF

 

Goodwill Ambassadors

UNICEF’s work in 2012 includes the tireless advocacy of 32 global, 14 regional and more than 200 national Goodwill Ambassadors.

 

Dedicated staff worldwide, enlisted for their expertise and passion carry out UNICEF’s work. At the end of 2012, UNICEF had about 11,500 staff, with 87 per cent working in country and regional offices and 13 per cent in headquarters locations.