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UNICEF Flag
The
United Nations Children's Fund (or
unicef; ) was created by the
United Nations General Assembly on December
11, 1946, to provide emergency food and healthcare to children in
countries that had been devastated by
World
War II. In 1953, UNICEF became a permanent part of the
United Nations System and its name was
shortened from the original
United Nations International
Children's Emergency Fund but it has continued to be known
by the popular
acronym based
on this old name.
Headquartered in New York City
, UNICEF provides long-term humanitarian and developmental assistance to
children and mothers in
developing
countries.
UNICEF relies on contributions from governments and private donors
and UNICEF's total income for 2006 was $2,781,000,000. Governments
contribute two thirds of the organization's resources; private
groups and some 6 million individuals contribute the rest through
the National Committees. UNICEF's programs emphasize developing
community-level services to promote the health and well-being of
children. UNICEF was awarded the
Nobel
Peace Prize in 1965 and the
Prince of Asturias Award of
Concord in 2006.
Structure of the organization and staff
The heart of UNICEF's work is in the field, with staff in over 190
countries and territories. More than 200 country offices carry out
UNICEF's mission through a unique program of cooperation developed
with host governments. Seven regional offices guide their work and
provide technical assistance to country offices as needed.
Overall management and administration of the organization takes
place at its headquarters in New York.
UNICEF's Supply
Division is based in Copenhagen
and serves as the primary point of distribution for
such essential items as lifesaving vaccines, antiretroviral medicines for children
and mothers with HIV, nutritional supplements, emergency shelters, educational supplies,
and more. Guiding and monitoring all of UNICEF's work is a
36-member Executive Board which establishes policies, approves
programs and oversees administrative and financial plans. The
Executive Board is made up of government representatives who are
elected by the
United Nations
Economic and Social Council, usually for three-year
terms.
Following the reaching of term limits by
Executive Director of UNICEF
Carol Bellamy, former
United States Secretary
of Agriculture Ann Veneman became
executive director of the organization in May 2005 with an agenda
to increase the organization's focus on the
Millennium Development
Goals.
Unlike NGOs, UNICEF is an inter-governmental organization and thus
is accountable to governments. This gives it unique reach and
access in every country in the world, but may also sometimes hamper
its ability to speak out publicly on rights violations, or to
openly criticise the policies and actions of governments.
UNICEF National Committees
There are National Committees in 36
industrialized countries worldwide, each
established as an independent local
non-governmental organization.
The National Committees serve as the public face and dedicated
voice of UNICEF, raising funds from the private sector, promoting
children’s rights, and securing worldwide visibility for children
threatened by poverty, disasters, armed conflict, abuse and
exploitation.
UNICEF is funded exclusively by voluntary contributions, and the
National Committees collectively raise around one-third of UNICEF's
annual income. This comes through contributions from corporations,
civil society organizations and more than 6 million individual
donors worldwide. They also rally many different partners –
including the media, national and local government officials, NGOs,
specialists such as doctors and lawyers, corporations, schools,
young people and the general public – on issues related to
children’s rights.
(see
List of UNICEF
National Committees)
Promotion and fundraising
In the
United
States
, Canada
and some
other countries, UNICEF is known for its "Trick-Or-Treat for
UNICEF" program in which children collect money for UNICEF from the
houses they trick-or-treat on
Halloween night, sometimes instead of
candy. UNICEF is present in 190 countries and territories
around the world. UNICEF designated 1979 as the "Year of the
Child", and many celebrities including
David Gordon,
David
Essex,
Alun Davies and
Cat Stevens gave a performance at a
benefit concert celebrating the
Year of the Child Concert in December
1979. Many people in
developed
countries first hear about UNICEF's work through the activities
of 37 National Committees for UNICEF. These
non-governmental organizations
(NGO) are primarily responsible for
fundraising, selling UNICEF greeting cards and
products, creating private and public partnerships, advocating for
children’s rights, and providing other invaluable support. The
U.S. Fund for UNICEF is the oldest of the
National Committees, founded in 1947. New Zealand appointed, in
2005, 18-year-old
Hayley Westenra, a
talented, world famous opera / pop singer as their Ambassador to
UNICEF, in an effort to enlist the youth of the world in supporting
UNICEF. Westenra has made several trips to visit underprivileged
children in third world countries on behalf of UNICEF, in an effort
to publicize their plight, and has engaged in fund-raising
activities in support of the UNICEF mission, as well.
In 2009,
the British retailer Tesco
used “Change
for Good” as advertising, which is trade marked by Unicef for
charity usage but is not trademarked for commercial or retail use
which prompted the agency to say "it is the first time in Unicef’s
history that a commercial entity has purposely set out to
capitalise on one of our campaigns and subsequently damage an
income stream which several of our programmes for children are
dependent on”.They went on to call on the public “who have
children’s welfare at heart, to consider carefully who they support
when making consumer choices”.
Sponsorship
Recently, UNICEF has begun partnerships with world-class athletes
and teams to promote the organization's work and to raise
funds.
On 7
September 2006, an agreement between UNICEF and the Catalan
association football club FC Barcelona was reached whereby the club would
donate 0.7% of its total yearly revenue to the organization for
five years. As part of the agreement, FC Barcelona will wear
the UNICEF
logo on the front of their
shirts, which will be the first time a
football club sponsored an organization rather
than the other way around. It is also the first time in FC
Barcelona's history that they have had another organization's name
across the front of their
shirts.
In January 2007, UNICEF struck a partnership with Canada's national
tent pegging team. The team was
officially re-flagged as "UNICEF Team Canada", its riders wear
UNICEF's logo in competition, and team members promote and raise
funds for UNICEF's campaign against childhood HIV-AIDS. When the
team became the 2008 tent pegging world champions, UNICEF's flag
was raised alongside the Canadian flag at the games, the first time
in the history of international Grand Prix equestrian competition
that a non-state flag has flown over the medal podium.
The
Swedish
club Hammarby IF
followed the Spanish and Canadian lead on 14 April 2007, also
raising funds for UNICEF and displaying the UNICEF name on their
sportswear. The Danish soccer club
Brøndby IF will do likewise from the summer
of 2008.
Race driver
Jacques Villeneuve
has occasionally placed the UNICEF logo on the #27
Bill Davis Racing pickup truck in the
NASCAR Craftsman
Truck Series.
The
ING Renault F1
Team
in Formula One are also
sponsored by UNICEF.
UNICEF recently announced a landmark partnership with Scotland's
Rangers F.C. UNICEF will partner the
Rangers Charity Foundation and have pledged to raise £300,000 by
2011.
Trick-or-Treat UNICEF box
Since 1950
when a group of children in Philadelphia
, Pennsylvania
, donated $17 they received on Halloween to help
post-World War II victims, the Trick-or-Treat UNICEF
box has become a tradition in North America during the haunting
season. These small orange boxes are handed to children at
schools and at various locations (such as
Hallmark Gold Crown Stores) prior to 31
October. To date, the box has collected approximately $91 million
(
CAD) in Canada and over $132
million (
USD) in the USA.
Art in All of Us
UNICEF
sponsors the Art in All of Us initiative founded
and organised by Anthony Asael
(Belgium
) and
Stephanie Rabemiafara (Madagascar
). The mission of Art in All of Us is to
promote creative cultural exchange throughout the UN listed
countries, using universal language of Art. The AiA World Art Book
Program of Art in All of Us will present in one book each and every
of the 192 UN-listed countries through a single portrait of a
resident, a drawing and a poem done by a local child.
Corporate Partnership
To raise money to support its Education and Literacy Programmes,
UNICEF works together with companies all over the world –
encompassing international as well as small- and medium-sized
businesses. Since 2005, the organization is being supported by
Montblanc, working closely together to
help the world’s children getting better access to education.
Public criticism
Many groups, governments, and individuals have criticized UNICEF
over the years for what they view as failing to meet the needs of
their particular group or interest.
Recent examples include criticism of its
perceived failure to hold the Government of Sudan
adequately
accountable for the practice of slavery
in southern Sudan , its policy against the marketing of
breast milk substitutes in developing
world hospitals , and its adherence to the 1990 Convention on the Rights
of the Child, which has been ratified by every member state in
the United Nations except for the United States (which is a
signatory to the convention) .
UNICEF
has also been criticised for having political bias by NGO Monitor, an Israeli
NGO with the stated aim of monitoring other
non-governmental organizations operating in the Middle East. NGO Monitor asserts that
while UNICEF aims to fund only non-political organisations, it also
funded "
Palestinian
Youth Association for Leadership and Rights Activation"
(PYALARA), a student-run Palestinian NGO. NGO Monitor alleges that
PYALARA has a covert political agenda justifying
suicide bombings and demonising Israel.
The
Catholic Church has also
been critical of UNICEF, with the
Vatican
at times withdrawing its donations, because of reports by the
American Life League and others
that UNICEF has used some of those funds to finance
sterilizations and
abortions.
A further
example is the emotive issue of intercountry adoption from Guatemala
. The country has ratified the
Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in
Respect of Intercountry Adoption of 29 May 1993 with effect
from 1 January 2008. UNICEF has been criticised by some interested
parties for failing to support adoptions that are underway before
the deadline but, once again, this fails to recognise UNICEF's
status and obligations as an international organisation, rather
than an NGO.
The UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre
UNICEF
Innocenti Research Centre in Florence
, Italy
, was
established in 1988 to strengthen the research capability of the
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and to support its advocacy
for children worldwide.
The Centre, formally known as the International Child Development
Centre, has as its prime objectives to improve international
understanding of the issues relating to children's rights, to
promote economic policies that advance the cause of children, and
to help facilitate the full implementation of the United Nations
Convention on the
Rights of the Child in industrialized and developing
countries.
The programme for 2006–2008 was approved by UNICEF Executive Board
in September 2005. It reaffirms the Centre's academic freedom and
the focus of IRC's research on knowledge gaps, emerging questions
and sensitive issues which are relevant to the realization of
children's rights, in developing and industrialized countries. It
capitalizes on IRC's role as an interface between UNICEF field
experience, international experts, research networks and policy
makers and is designed to strengthen the Centre's institutional
collaboration with regional academic and policy institutions,
pursuing the following four goals:
- Generation and communication of strategic and influential
knowledge on issues affecting children and the realization of their
rights;
- Knowledge exchange and brokering;
- Support to UNICEF's advocacy, policy and programme development
in support of the Millennium Agenda
- Securing and strengthening the Centre's institutional and
financial basis.
Three interrelated strategies will guide the achievement of these
goals:
- Evidence-based analysis drawing on quantitative and qualitative
information, the application of appropriate methodologies, and the
development of recommendations to assess and inform advocacy and
policy action.
- Enhanced partnerships with research and policy institutions and
development actors, globally and at regional level, in developing
and industrialized countries.
- Communication and leveraging of research findings and
recommendations to support policy development and advocacy
initiatives through strategic dissemination of studies and
contribution to relevant events and fora.
See also
References and notes
External links
Social Media
Video clips