Going to work today I couldn’t help notice the normality of the scene. Parents rushing to get their children to school before the gates close. Yellow buses pulling up with older pupils, most of them excitedly, some a little more reluctantly, heaving their school bags down the stairs. Commuters scurrying into the warren of New York’s… Read more →←
Topic: Experts speak
Ruined crops. Dead livestock. More than 10.2 million people in need of urgent relief assistance. Six million children stalked by thirst, hunger and disease. This is the situation in Ethiopia, now facing the worst drought in decades. Few places more fully bear the costs of this crisis than the parched, rocky Afar region of Ethiopia, where… Read more →←
This year, more than 140 million babies will be born around the globe – a group nearly as large as the entire population of the Russian Federation. In total, there will be an estimated 2.2 billion babies by 2030, the overwhelming majority of whom will be born in Africa and Asia. What is in store for the first babies of 2016? Our 2015… Read more →←
With so much the world focused on war, terrorism and the plight of a seemingly endless stream of refugees, it is no surprise that the plight of Somali children has been largely forgotten. The last time the country was heavily featured in news headlines was nearly five years ago, when failed rains and failed politics led to famine. By the… Read more →←
UNICEF’s renewed pursuit of equity for children has two central meanings for me. First, children in the worst possible circumstances should always be our very first priority – as UNICEF contemplated our responsibilities under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted 26 years ago – this was one of our very first… Read more →←
Faeces (“poo”, “number two”, “doodoo”, “shit”) can kill children. Over 800 children under 5 years old die every day from diseases linked to inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene. That is like two Boeing 747’s full of babies and pre-kindergartners crashing without a survivor every single day, 365 days a year. This… Read more →←
Thirty years ago, there were over 350,000 cases of wild polio virus each year. In 2014, there were just 359 and so far this year, only 51. That’s a 99.9 percent decrease, a truly remarkable accomplishment. Earlier this year, Nigeria – which in 2012 recorded 122 cases of paralysis and was considered one of the most difficult… Read more →←
We are living through a watershed year for global development with the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals, an agenda for 2030 that is the universal development charter for the 21st century. These new SDG Goals recognize that children are agents of change when they channel their infinite potential to create a better world. In… Read more →←
Monday morning brought the news that Angus Deaton, an eminent economist and vocal critic of many forms of international aid, had won this year’s Nobel Prize for Economics. Blogs and opinion pages rapidly filled with predictions that the development community would bristle at the recognition of someone who had challenged so many aid… Read more →←
This year the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty stands out from previous years. It falls at the dawn of a new era in the efforts to end poverty, and more specifically to ensure a clear new focus on poverty among children. The global community have placed eradicating extreme poverty as Goal 1 and the heart of the new… Read more →←
