Twenty-five tiny newborns were crammed three and four to a bed. The only sink was filled with dirty water with no soap in sight. An empty bottle of hand sanitizer hung from a string on the door. The scene before me in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) of a major hospital in Ethiopia wasn’t the worst I had seen, but it was no less… Read more →←
Topic: Impact
2020 has been a very peculiar year. I started working as an Education Officer in UNICEF Uruguay at the end of January. One month later, a new President assumed office. Two weeks after that, the first case of COVID-19 was detected, and the President declared a national emergency and closed all schools. We switched to working from home,… Read more →←
Article co-authored by Henrietta Fore (Executive Director of UNICEF) and Kevin Watkins (Chief Executive of Save the Children UK), first published in El País newspaper on Sunday 18th October. At the height of Africa’s debt crisis in the mid-1980s, Tanzania’s then President, Julius Nyerere, asked his country’s creditors a simple… Read more →←
As part of the COVID-19 Diaries, UNICEF Niger accompanies the President of the Association of Traditional Chiefs of Niger during a sensitization campaign in Niamey. These are not easy days in Niamey. The arrival of COVID-19 has not been unnoticed in the capital’s neighborhoods. Communities are mobilizing to face the spread of the… Read more →←
With the world staying home due to COVID-19, we see a rise in gender-based violence (GBV), including domestic violence. Recently, the UN reported that Lebanon and Malaysia, for example, have seen the number of calls to helplines double since this time last year; in China they have tripled, and in Australia, search engines are seeing the… Read more →←
When our car pulled over to pick up Yvonne, I was at once struck by her elegance. In this small village in remote Nyagatare District, she stood out in her vibrant patterned pants and her deep blue cotton poncho lined with faux fur. Yvonne is one of Rwanda’s nearly 30,000 Inshuti z’Umuryango, or “IZU” as we call them colloquially,… Read more →←
For every child, an identity and a future My name is Miranda Armstrong and I’ve been the Chief of Child Protection for UNICEF, Cote d’Ivoire for the last three years. As a specialist on violence against children and child labour, non-registered children issues — including the fact that many children aren’t registered at all —… Read more →←
My name is Wadimo Joy. I have been a teacher in Uganda for 26 years. I believe assistive technology is a blessing to the growing minds of children with disabilities in Uganda today. In last year’s Primary School finals, one of my students with disabilities received a better score than all the other candidates. I know this success was… Read more →←
“We are children! We want peace! We want school! Let’s make peace among us!” Watching a group of children at Lumbwe primary school singing and dancing to peace slogans was amusing, only until I learned about the physical and emotional wounds each child in the group bore. “The girl singing in the middle of the circle was… Read more →←
No, I’m not talking about “revenge body” with one of the Kardashian sisters or the fast-result fad diets popular these days. I’m talking about three children, babies, who range from eight to fourteen months old, with results that make me tear up. Let’s go back eight weeks. I went to Aweil town in northern South Sudan to… Read more →←