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UNICEF
With its focus on the needs and rights of the child, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) devotes as much as 80 percent of its funds to programs that can be classified under the broad umbrella of public health. Working in partnership with governments as well as health-related organizations, notably the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF is active in programs ranging fromimmunization and oral rehydration campaigns to water and sanitation projects, and from the fight against acute respiratory infections to the elimination of polio and micronutrient deficiencies. Its contribution to international public health, particularly for children and mothers, has been significant and extensive. Indeed, in the last two decades of the twentieth century, UNICEF, with its activistleadership, helped shape the agenda of international health.
THE EVOLUTION OF UNICEF
The United Nations General Assembly created the UN International Children's Emergency Fund as a temporary agency on December 11, 1946, to provide urgent relief aid to children in countries ravaged by World War II in Europe and Asia. Its assistance consisted of food, shelter, and medicine. In 1953, the GeneralAssembly gave the fund a continuing mandate to help needy children in developing countries and dropped the words "international" and "emergency" from its name. By then, however, the acronym "UNICEF" had become so well known that the Assembly retained it.
With infant mortality as high as 150 to 200 per 1,000 live births in many parts of Asia, Latin America, and Africa, UNICEF soon turned its attentionto the urgent health issues of children and mothers. Guidance for such work came from a joint WHO/UNICEF committee on health policies that involved members of the governing boards of both institutions. In recent years, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) has also joined the committee.
In the early 1950s, infectious diseases were rampant in many parts of the world, and UNICEF became heavily involved incampaigns against those diseases that could be prevented or for which there was a ready treatment. UNICEF furnished equipment and supplies to countries for mass-disease campaigns, with WHO providing the technical support. These campaigns included malaria, yaws, tuberculosis, typhus, trachoma, and leprosy. In its efforts to reduce infant mortality, UNICEF also promoted the training of traditionalbirth attendants and provided equipment, medicine, and transport for maternal and child health services.
The 1960s saw UNICEF working with the WHO and many governments in extending rural health services, and with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in fighting child malnutrition. Planning for the development of the "whole child," instead of a more piecemeal approach,became the basis of UNICEF's broader program thrust that opened the door for its focus on education as part of preparation for life.
NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
In 1965 UNICEF was awarded the Noble Peace Prize, thus linking its services for future generations with peace building. The Prize provided a solid base from which to build its effective role in advocacy for children.
UNICEF was the first UN bodyto take up the issue of family planning. Though the controversial subject was presented in the context of responsible parenthood to UNICEF's executive board in 1966, after an unprecedented and acrimonious debate the deeply divided board deferred its decision by one year, and it eventually took a relatively mild stance on the issue. As UNFPA was created in 1967, the pressure for UNICEF to take upthe issue head-on was eased.
By the early 1970s, UNICEF shifted its emphasis to the provision of basic services for children (including education), while it maintained a predominance of its fund allocations to health programs. Though UNICEF changed its stance from its origin as a relief agency to that of a development organization, it continued to respond to emergencies. In 1974, in response to...