What's the best bit of the UN? No 4: Unicef

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/08/best-bit-un-unicef-united-nations-childrens-fund

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With operations in more than 190 countries and territories, a roll call of celebrity ambassadors stretching from Danny Kaye to Katy Perry, and a Nobel prize under its belt, the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) is among the UN’s most high-profile and well-known organisations.

The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, as it was originally known, was founded in 1946 to tend to the millions of children facing hunger and disease in Europe after the second world war.

According to its figures, Unicef has helped provide nearly 2 billion people with water; immunised 40% of the world’s children, helping to save 3 million lives a year ; and has helped reduce the number of deaths of children under five by 50% since 1990.

Unicef, which is funded by voluntary contributions from governments, NGOs, foundations and private individuals, spent $4.8bn last year, with most of its direct programme money going on health, followed by education and water, sanitation and hygiene.

As well as working on long-term development programmes, Unicef deals with humanitarian emergencies.

In 2014 it responded to almost 300 emergencies in 90 countries, including the aftermath of typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, the continuing conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Central African Republic, the intensification of the civil war in South Sudan and the Ebola crisis in parts of west Africa.

The fund has shown itself to be prepared to speak out. In June this year, its executive director, Anthony Lake, tried to focus the world’s attention on South Sudan amid reports that boys were being castrated and left to bleed to death, girls as young as eight were being gang-raped and murdered, and other children had been thrown into burning buildings. “The details of the worsening violence against children are unspeakable,” he said. “But we must speak of them.”

Like his predecessors in the top job, Lake – previously a national security adviser to Bill Clinton – is an American; the US is the largest single donor to the New York-based organisation.

The fund has found itself the object of criticism. In 1995, Unicef reported that fraud and mismanagement in its Kenyan office over the previous two years had lost it as much as $10m.

It has admitted that it and others in the international community are still failing many of those they are charged with protecting.

Earlier this year, Unicef warned that while the millennium development goals had yielded significant achievements in reducing child and maternal mortality and improving access to drinking water, they had failed millions of disadvantaged children and even increased levels of inequality in some countries.

Unless the world is bolder and better at helping the most vulnerable people in the planet, it has said in a report, almost 70 million children under five will die by 2030 from mainly preventable causes.