1. Learn from History, Don’t Rediscover the Wheel
UNICEF has an amazing history of extraordinary achievements that have led it to win the Nobel Peace Prize; organize the very first World Summit for Children with the largest assembly of world leaders in history; lend its decisive weight to the adoption and virtually universal ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child; stop wars temporarily to protect children; and pioneer innovations in advocacy, fund-raising and serving as the “people-to-people” organization of the United Nations.
Regrettably, many new UNICEF staff members, including some in leadership positions, are woefully ill-informed about this proud and inspiring history. Some attempt to rediscover the wheel, oblivious of the lessons of UNICEF’s own past experiences and proud history.
To remedy this trend, all UNICEF staff members should be required to read the following publications in their first six months at UNICEF: the Charter of the United Nations, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the First Call for Children from the World Summit for Children and A World Fit for Children from the Special Session, two volumes of UNICEF history by Maggie Black (The Children and the Nations and Children First), and Jim Grant: UNICEF Visionary.
There are other important readings depending on the specific interests of staff, but these core publications must be part of the UNICEF 101 induction course for everyone. I would ask the Division of Human Resources to include information on this required reading in the appointment letters for all new staff members, followed by a reminder when their contracts are renewed.
2. Harness the Commitment of UNICEF Staff
We often say that staff are the real asset of UNICEF. If UNICEF is to succeed in its mission, we must learn how to harness the full potential of our staff. As I look back over the last 35 years, UNICEF has been at its best when we have managed to get all staff excited about the organization’s life-saving and protective actions in the field. Perhaps staff motivation peaked during the child survival and immunization campaigns in the 1980s, when most staff felt directly engaged in UNICEF’s mission.
Even now, when all staff – programme officers, secretaries, administrative and finance assistants, drivers, heads of offices, etc. – are mobilized in response to disasters like the tsunami or earthquakes, or in campaigns against polio or measles, staff morale soars despite difficult working conditions.
Some old-timers will recall how UNICEF’s legendary leader Jim Grant used to say that in the larger scheme of things, those of us who work for UNICEF are just a handful of people with pocketfuls of coins and ordinary intellect. What makes us special, he said, is the noble mission of the organization. This inspires and motivates us, working as a team, to achieve extraordinary results.
Let us ensure that we continue to find creative ways to motivate our staff and harness their full potential to help achieve extraordinary results for children.
3. Work for the Mission
It is a privilege to work for the United Nations and to serve humanity. Working for UNICEF should be seen not just as a job, but also as a mission.
UNICEF and the UN are considered among the best employers in most countries. There are thousands of very competent people across the world who would love to have our jobs. So let us not forget that none of us is indispensable.
For the privilege of working with UNICEF, I hope all staff will cultivate a genuine interest in UNICEF’s mission, and are ready to serve in functions and places where your services are needed most. If you can’t do that, and if your primary motivation to work at UNICEF is for money or job security, consider finding another employer.
4. Choose the Moral High Ground over Political Correctness:
When Maurice Pate was asked to become UNICEF’s first Executive Director, he took the job on one condition: that UNICEF should be allowed to help children in need everywhere, regardless of political or other considerations. By and large, UNICEF has remained faithful to this principle.
But occasionally UNICEF comes under pressure from powerful member states, some autocratic regimes, and blocks of countries seeking to impose or comply with conditionalities, selectivity and sanctions that are not always based on concern for the well-being of children.
I hope UNICEF’s senior management, at all levels, will have the courage and wisdom to stick to the principle of reaching all children, even when it may seem expedient to do otherwise.
5. Safeguard the Magic of UNICEF:
With its universally cherished mandate, the noblest of all missions, a record of proud achievements, extensive field presence in developing countries and a network of citizen volunteers in industrialized countries, UNICEF appeals not just to the head but to the heart and even the soul of its supporters and the general public.
The magical reverence for UNICEF’s work generated by our wonderful Goodwill Ambassadors and selfless volunteers is an asset for the whole United Nations, and for all activists working for the rights and well-being of children. UNICEF’s decentralized field office network, with its highly empowered country representatives, is another asset that should be preserved and strengthened.
UNICEF must not only be an efficient machine for international cooperation. It must also safeguard its magical lustre with a moral purpose.
6. Deliver as One UNICEF:
In the context of UN reform, to bring greater coherence to the UN system’s support to developing countries, efforts are being made to encourage the UN system to ‘deliver as one’. UNICEF must continue to play a constructive role in this context, and support all sensible efforts to strengthen the UN system’s capacity to ‘deliver as one’ with greater harmony, efficiency and effectiveness.
But while we do this, we must watch that UNICEF does not become a house divided because of inadequate consultation with staff, directives coming from on high that do not respect country reality, and compromises limiting access to leadership and the ability to be a fearless advocate for children. UNICEF’s unique ability to mobilize resources from the public as well as private sector should not be lost.
‘Delivering as one’ must not lead to well-established and highly regarded UN agencies losing their identity, as was once suggested in a UN reform proposal in the late 1990s recommending that all UN funds and programmes should be merged into one super UN Development Agency.
Carol Bellamy wisely and courageously resisted that proposal, and Kofi Annan agreed with her. In fact, I recall Kofi Annan came out with a very apt proposition. He said he wanted all UN agencies, especially at the field level, to work as a well-coordinated team.
But he clarified that when he said a team, he was thinking about a soccer team in which all team members work towards a common goal, but where each player has the opportunity to demonstrate individual brilliance. This stands in contrast to a rowing team in which everybody must paddle simultaneously at exactly the same pace.
Some of the unique characteristics of UNICEF that make it a much loved and respected organization and a strong member of the UN country team should be seen as an asset for the whole United Nations. To help the UN ‘deliver as one’, UNICEF itself must remain capable of delivering as one UNICEF.
7. Retain the Humanitarian and Development Balance:
UNICEF was originally established as an emergency fund, and gradually evolved into a development agency, but without giving up its humanitarian role. The world looks to UNICEF to help when children are in distress because of natural disasters or man-made emergencies. UNICEF’s reputation for prompt and effective emergency action was in part what won the organization the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965.
Most donors as well as developing countries appreciate the fact that UNICEF is often there before, during and after emergencies. The fact that we provide many life-saving services that are equally essential during emergencies and in normal development is another asset. UNICEF epitomizes the value of the seamless continuum from humanitarian to development support.
From time to time, in the context of UN reform, there have been proposals recommending three distinct pillars separating emergency from development activities, and both of these from environmental work. Based on our experience, such a separation would not only be problematic for UNICEF, it would be artificial and bad for children.
We must insist on UNICEF not being fragmented and being allowed to continue working across the humanitarian-development continuum.
Of course, we all hope that there will be fewer emergencies and we can concentrate more on longer-term development. But as long as UNICEF exists, its ability to help children in need, including in emergencies, must not be compromised.
8. Be Guided by the Best Interest of Children:
Faced with limited resources and unlimited needs, policy makers and managers are often confronted with having to decide among competing priorities. This happens in all organizations. In the give and take of realpolitik, compromises have to be made.
Fortunately for UNICEF, the Convention on the Rights of the Child offers a good basis for making difficult decisions or advising on the right choices. When in doubt about the best course of action, we should opt for what is in the best interest of children.
To determine the best interest of children may be easier said than done, especially when it comes to the best interest of a single child versus children as a group. UNICEF should be mindful that public investment policies need to generally prioritize collective over individual interests. There is no simple formula or substitute for tough judgment calls, but “the best interest of children” does provide us with a very helpful moral compass to guide our decisions and recommendations.
9. Help Fulfill the Rights of All Children:
As a development agency, the major focus of UNICEF’s financial and material support must continue to be the most vulnerable children in the poorest countries of the world, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa
But UNICEF would be performing well below its potential and neglecting its mandate if it did not use its considerable influence, convening power and advocacy potential to help children everywhere, including in middle-income countries, and judiciously even in the industrialized countries.
While the national average of basic services coverage in most wealthier countries may seem respectable, there often are significant pockets of poverty, gaping disparities and dysfunctional basic social service systems. All countries can and should do a better job in fully complying with the CRC by creating a more protective environment and improving the quality of services for children.
UNICEF’s very modest catalytic investments – often in policy advocacy, legislation and the exchange of experiences – can produce disproportionately beneficial impacts for large numbers of children in need.
We must also remember that what happens in the rich, industrialized countries has a fairly direct demonstration effect in developing countries – for better or worse. So anything UNICEF can do to promote good child rearing and caring practices in the North can eventually benefit children in the South.
I worry especially about children in rich countries – and children of the rich in poor countries – who are growing up so mesmerized by the make-believe world of video games and gadgets that they are alienated from the real world. Paradoxically, the revolution in information and communication technology today can lead children to be more aloof and isolated rather than more engaged in human interaction and community spirit. If they grow up in a cocoon of virtual reality, will they someday have empathy for the poor and downtrodden? Will they understand how the poor live? What quality of leadership can we expect from today’s privileged children, the most likely rulers of tomorrow’s world?
As the world’s premiere agency for children, UNICEF needs to be concerned about these profound issues. That is why I believe very strongly in UNICEF NatComs’ role in education for development and global solidarity.
Besides helping with basic services for children in the poorest countries, UNICEF has a major role globally in supporting programmes that inculcate in the younger generation respect for such values as the universality of human rights, diversity, mutual understanding, the peaceful resolution of conflicts and equitable human development.
10. We Are the World, We Are the United Nations:
While we are proud of UNICEF, we must not forget that we are part of the larger UN system. Children cannot survive, thrive and grow to their full human potential in a world where there is poverty, inequality, injustice, wars and conflicts, environmental degradation and chronic violations of human rights.
We need the full force of the United Nations – with its political clout, diplomatic skills, technical expertise, normative mandate and moral authority to help create a framework for a world order in which organizations like UNICEF can play their vital role.
Detractors of the United Nations are quick to point out its many shortcomings, some of which we cannot deny or ignore. But in our imperfect world, which is rapidly shrinking into a global village, there is no alternative to interdependence and solidarity. As the current discussion on climate change is highlighting, rich and poor, North and South we will all sink or swim together.
Assuming we would rather swim than sink together, we need an organization like the United Nations to help establish some common rules of the game for managing global public goods and values. As has been said before, if the United Nations did not exist, it surely would have to be created anew. Since it already exists, and has endured and overcome some of the toughest challenges to its raison d’etre, let us make it an effective instrument for tackling those planetary problems that no nation, no matter how powerful, can hope to tackle alone.
The time will come one day when the well-being of children will be regarded as perhaps the most precious global public good, representing the most universally cherished human value of all. A world espousing such values will need a functioning architecture of global governance. In this, the United Nations will provide a sturdy anchor for the essential work of organizations like UNICEF.
