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Mr. Giersing explained that UNICEF had been created to
help European children after World War II, as the UN International
Children’s Emergency Fund. After that work was done, it was turned into
a development and emergency agency to look after the world’s children.
UNICEF now employs 8,000 people with offices in all countries around the
globe. It has funds of 1.2 billion dollars a year, one-third of which
comes from private donors, so it also has a fund-raising function. The
rest of the money is contributed by governments.
A major breakthrough for the world’s children came in
1990 with the formulation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child,
signed by all countries.
Although concentrating on the needs of children, UNICEF’s
work cuts across all sectors because every area has an impact on the
lives of children.
UNICEF’s work in Bangladesh involves both emergencies and
development, and is one of its largest operations in the world,
involving 40 to 50 million dollars a year and 150 staff, 50 of whom are
based in field offices.
Mr. Giersing said Bangladesh faced huge problems but had
also made great advances. For example, many lives were saved with oral
rehydration salts, which were invented in Bangladesh and taken globally
by UNICEF. Most children now went to primary school, including girls.
Ninety-five percent of people had access to water, although it was now
discovered that some of it was arsenic-contaminated. Child mortality has
been reduced by one-third over ten years, although 250-300,000 children
still died each year due to mostly preventable causes.
UNICEF is working to protect marginalised children: those
who are working, abused, disabled and trafficked. One particular area of
concern is the number of children who died from injury – 30 to 40
percent of children aged 1 to 19 died from injuries such as poisoning,
burns and accidents. The single largest killer of children over one is
drowning. UNICEF is currently doing a survey to collect data on this so
that something could be done about it.
HIV/AIDS is another priority area. Although Bangladesh
does not have an epidemic the scale of Africa, no one knows what could
happen. Injecting drug users are shown to have AIDS; while sex workers
do not use condoms. The incidence of sexually transmitted diseases is
high. UNICEF is working with high-risk groups to prevent the spread of
HIV/AIDS.
In Bangladesh, six million children work. UNICEF has
started a programme providing two hours of schooling to 350,000 of them.
There are 300,000 children in domestic labour in Dhaka. If the middle
class could be persuaded that this is not acceptable, the practice could
be stopped. Families should be made to realise that these children have
to go to school and have minimum health care and nutritional standards,
Mr. Giersing said.
After discovering arsenic in wells, UNICEF is trying to
test all wells for arsenic contamination so that the worst affected
could be closed down. So far, 1.2 million have been tested, he added.
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After
the tour, we were treated to tea and snacks provided by UNDP and sat
down to listen to our speaker. President Vanessa Brooks welcomed members
to the meeting. Liti Lissner introduced Vassana Barclay as the new
Membership Chairperson. Marika Vollmann reported on the first meeting of
the UN Ball Committee and urged more volunteers to come forward.
