About UNICEF: United Nations Children’s Fund, originally known as the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), is an agency of the United Nations (UN) that administers programs to aid children’s health and education, especially in developing countries. UNICEF was set up by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 11 December 1946 to provide children and mothers with emergency food and health care in countries ravaged by World War II. In 1953, UNICEF became a permanent part of the United Nations System, and the words "International" and "Emergency" were dropped from the organization’s name, though it retained the original acronym, "UNICEF."
UNICEF works in over 190 countries and territories to save children's lives, defend their rights, and help them fulfil their potential from early childhood through adolescence. The Annual Report 2023 of UNICEF is now in the public domain, so I am presenting a few points collected from the Report which are reliable (www.unicef.org/reports/unicef-annual-report-2023)
A) UNICEF and its partners provided more than 210 million children with services for the early detection and treatment of child wasting through the new Community Health Delivery Partnership.
B) In a historic breakthrough for child survival, UNICEF delivered 6.2 million doses of the world’s first malaria vaccine to seven African countries.
C) Last year marked the halfway point to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the world’s 17-point ‘to-do’ list to radically improve the lives of people and the planet by 2030. With just seven years to go, we have fallen behind. The poorest and most vulnerable children bear the brunt of this collective failure. Unfortunately, at the current rate of progress, the world will not meet two-thirds of the child-related SDGs.
D) From Gaza to the Sudan to Ukraine and beyond, over 450 million – nearly 1 in 5 children – live in or have fled a conflict zone. Increasingly, children are under attack as densely populated urban areas, hospitals, schools, and refugee camps are targeted, in some cases preventing the delivery of humanitarian aid and attacking distribution points, as in Gaza, where three-quarters of the population has been displaced, and 70 percent of those killed have been children and women.
E) In 2023, these new and protracted conflicts coincided with other devastating crises, from the catastrophic floods in Libya to earthquakes in Afghanistan, Morocco, the Syrian Arab Republic, and Türkiye. Climate change continued to wreak havoc on young lives – causing severe droughts, heatwaves, and more intense storms.
Even then, in some cases progresses were observed:
i) Economies and the delivery of essential services for children continued to recover from the worst effects of the pandemic. More children have access to primary health care, essential immunizations, and education than in 2022.
ii) In 2023, UNICEF and UNICEF’s partners reached 9.3 million children with life-saving treatment for severe wasting – the most ever – helping to turn the tide against the global malnutrition crisis.
iii) The global under-5 mortality rate has declined by 51 percent since 2000.
iv) Nearly half of the world’s population is under the age of 30. The only way to meet the 2030 Goals is to prioritize child rights and focus our efforts on children.
If interested, the academicians, researchers, and scholars can go through the Report for research studies.
Prof Shankar Chatterjee, Hyderabad
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