UNICEF Chief: Financial Disaster Cannot Rationalize Letting Children Die

Painful cuts to the Spanish development budget must not unswervingly impact vital life-saving overseas aid, Marta Arias, the director of UNICEF-Spain’s social awareness campaigns, has told EurActiv.es.

No crisis can justify the death of a single child anywhere in the world, she supposed, in an exclusive interview. Industrialised countries still have resources to maintain their cooperation as an essential policy and they must do so.

As Madrid battles to decrease its deficit, the country’s generosity has also shrunk. Between 2010 and 2012, its budget for development and cooperation aid plummeted by 67%. Such cuts could jeopardize the continuity of Spanish flagship projects like one in the center of Manhiça Investigaçao em Saúde, which is presently developing a new malaria vaccine.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s government has committed itself to returning to the levels of pre-crisis cooperation if the situation in the country’s economy improves in 2015 or 2016. Spanish cooperation spending has had a tangible effect. According to UNICEF, in Mauritania Spanish aid saved nearly 90,000 children from malnutrition in 2012.

In Bolivia, more than 230,000 children are alive today, thanks to better access to health services and sanitation. And in Mozambique, some 1.6 million children have received life-saving vaccination programs funded by Madrid over the last 20 years.

UNICEF wants to elevate awareness about the benefits of this kind of international cooperation and is calling for a return to pre-crisis levels of spending as soon as possible.  

The scope of the new UNICEF campaign was to emphasize that development aid was not theoretical or intangible but had a direct positive impact on thousands of people in the Third World.

UNICEF Launched End of Violence against Children Campaign

UNICEF has launched an End of Violence against Children campaign, aiming to emphasize that just because you can’t see violence, doesn’t mean it’s not there. UNICEF brought in actor and goodwill ambassador Liam Neeson in a bid to show up instances of violence against children, cyber harassment and gang rape. 

The 60-second spot shows the consequences of violence rather than actual event, leaving observer to construct their own report. Naked infrastructure and production company Brand New School were tasked by UNICEF to build up the project which also includes a micro site and a social media guide which outlines ways for children, parents and communities to take act.

Don't marginalize children with disabilities: Unicef

State of the world's children report highlights alarming link between disability and undernourishment ahead of UK hunger apex. Michael Hosea, a Tanzanian who was born in 1995 with albinism, provides a stark instance of the prejudices people with disabilities face. In Tanzania, practitioners of witchcraft chase and kill albino public to use their hair, body parts and organs. 

Still it is illegal to kill people with albinoism, it still happens. Hosea's family had to flee their home, travelling more than 500km after they were warned that he and his two albino siblings were to be killed. 

After finding out that the family had fled, the people who came looking for them went to their next-door neighbor, a local albino envoy, and cut off his arms, departure him to die. The report said there is little precise data on the number of children with disabilities, what disabilities these children have, and how disabilities influence their lives.

UNICEF: Risks Children and Women are Far from Over

The United Nations Children's Fund Nations Programme headquartered in New York City that provides long term humanitarian and developmental assistance to children and mothers in developing countries. With the recent military intervention to recover control of Mali’s vast desert north, the humanitarian situation, exacerbated by insecurity, has become even more serious for the most susceptible populations children and women.

To give an inside look at what it takes to react to a complex emergency on the ground, UNICEF has published a special report, Supporting Women and Children through an Emergency. The report archives the scale-up of UNICEF operations in Mali, a country already struggling from poverty, inadequate education and a weakened health system. Building on gains and results over the past year, UNICEF is suspended to respond to the new risks that Mali’s children and women face.