10 The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)

Jessica Lawrence

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Introduction

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is a United Nations (UN) programme established to provide humanitarian and development assistance to children and mothers, primarily in the developing world. Its fundamental mission is “to promote the rights of every child, everywhere, in everything the organization does.”

Learning Outcomes:

  • To understand the mission of UNICEF. To evaluate its policies.
  • To see how UNICEF is an organization trying to preserve and promote the human rights of individuals and communities.

UNICEF’s Mission Statement:

UNICEF is mandated by the United Nations General Assembly to advocate for the protection of children’s rights, to help meet their basic needs and to expand their opportunities to reach their full potential.

In doing so, the organization has established a number of concrete ‘outcomes’ to guide its institutional activities:

Health, with a focus on “improved and equitable use of high-impact maternal, newborn and child health interventions from pregnancy to adolescence and promotion of healthy behaviours”;

HIV and AIDS, with a focus on “improved and equitable use of proven HIV prevention and treatment interventions by children, pregnant women, and adolescents”;

Water, sanitation and hygiene, with a focus on “improved and equitable use of safe drinking water, sanitation and healthy environments, and improved hygiene practices”;

Nutrition, with a focus on “improved and equitable use of nutritional support and improved nutrition and care practices”;

Education, with a focus on “improved learning outcomes and equitable and inclusive education”;

Child protection, with a focus on “improved and equitable prevention of and response to violence, abuse, exploitation and neglect of children”;

Social inclusion, with a focus on “improved policy environment and systems for disadvantaged and excluded children.”

In order to accomplish these goals, UNICEF “mobilizes political will and material resources to help countries, particularly developing countries, ensure a ‘first call for children’ and to build their capacity to form appropriate policies and deliver services for children and their families,” and pays special attention to “promot[ing] the equal rights of women and girls and to support[ing] their full participation in the political, social, and economic development of their communities.”

Concretely speaking, UNICEF collects and distributes information, research, and statistics on the situation of children throughout its issue areas. It distributes supplies and performs logistical support for aid to children. It evaluates and identifies good practices to support its own work, as well as the work of other organizations. It coordinates the activities of the UN system on issues regarding children, adolescents and mothers. And in emergency situations (such as natural disasters and the aftermath of war and conflict), UNICEF cooperates with other UN programmes and agencies, as well as humanitarian organizations, to provide rapid response to children in need of aid. In this capacity, it acts as a non-partisan organization whose assistance is provided on a non-discriminatory basis.

History

The figure of the child as in need of special legal protection has a history dating back to the 1800s. It was in the mid-1800s that laws began to appear limiting children’s activities in the workplace and ensuring their right to be educated. Protection of children did not make an appearance on the international stage, however, until the early twentieth century. Faced with mounting reports of the horrors of children’s exploitation in the workplace and the evils of human trafficking and exploitation, the League of Nations took up the cause in its founding document. Article 23 of the League of Nations Covenant provided that:

…the Members of the League:

(a) will endeavour to secure and maintain fair and human conditions of labour for men, women, and children, both in their own countries and in all the countries to which their commercial and industrial relations extend, and for that purpose will establish and maintain the necessary international organisations; …

(b) will entrust the League with the general supervision over the execution of agreements with regard to the traffic in women and children, and the traffic in opium and other dangerous drugs;

To this end, the League of Nations established a Committee for child protection and passed a Declaration on the Rights of the Child—one of the oldest human rights instruments—in 1924. The International Labour Organization (ILO) adopted a number of conventions on children’s issues during its early years, including convention on the Night Work of Young Persons (1919), Minimum Age for work at Sea (1920), Minimum Age for work in Agriculture (1921), and Medical Examination of Young Persons (1921).

WWII devastated the lives and support systems of large numbers of children in Europe. During the war, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Authority (UNRRA) provided some support to these children in need of food, clothing and healthcare services. Following the war and the dissolution of UNRRA, however, many of these children continued to require assistance.

To that end, the UN General Assembly created UNICEF on December 11, 1946. At that time, its full name was the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund—hence its acronym. UNICEF took over the duties (and funds) of UNRRA with respect to the needs of children and mothers, providing food, assistance and medical treatment.

For its first few years of existence, UNICEF’s mandate was generally limited to the assistance of children in Europe. The UN General Assembly voted in 1950, however, to include the long-term needs of children and women everywhere, and particularly in developing countries. In 1953, the UN General Assembly voted to extend UNICEF’s mandate indefinitely and shortened its name to the United Nations Children’s Fund (though the original acronym was kept). Since that time, the organization has remained an established part of the UN system.

UNICEF continued its work assisting children throughout the next several decades, demonstrating sufficient competence that in 1965, it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of its work supporting mothers and children around the world.

However, UNICEF in its early years shied away from the human rights dimensions of children’s issues, avoiding discussion of rights or presenting them carefully to refrain from appearing threatening to governments. As Philip Alston and John Tobin report, it was not until the process of preparing and developing the framework for the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) that UNICEF began to gradually incorporate a human rights-based approach to its work.

Work on drafting the CRC began in during the preparations for the International Year of the Child in 1979. At the time, UNICEF provided unqualified support for and promotion of this process of drafting, ratifying, and universalizing an international human rights treaty specifically aimed at the protection of children’s rights. The CRC was finally adopted in 1989 and has become the most widely ratified of all international human rights instruments.

Following this period, UNICEF made the CRC central to its priorities and programmeming and began to re-orient its work around this human rights core. Today, UNICEF continues to maintain strong support for the CRC as well as the human rights approach in general and has become a leader in international human rights-based approaches to protection and development.

The Institution

UNICEF is headquartered in New York City, though it also maintains seven regional offices, a supply operation in Copenhagen, the Innocenti Research Centre in Florence, and country offices around the world.

As a UN programme, UNICEF is formally controlled by the UN General Assembly, which regularly reviews its activities. It reports to the Economic and Social Council, which also appoints its Executive Board.

UNICEF’s Executive Board is which is made up of 36 members representing the five regional groups of UN Member States (currently 8 African States, 7 Asian States, 4 Eastern European States, 5 Latin American and Caribbean States and 12 Western European and other States). These Members are elected to three-year terms of office. The Executive Board is responsible for approving UNICEF’s policies, country programmes, and budgets. It meets three times per year, at the UN headquarters in New York.

UNICEF is headed by an Executive Director, who is appointed to a five-year term by the UN Secretary General. The current Executive Director is Anthony Lake, former US National Security Advisor, who began his term in 2010.

UNICEF’s budget is made up of contributions from governments as well as private donors and donations collected by UNICEF National Committees.

Role as a Forum for Human Rights

Children’s human rights are an area of special concern in international law. Although children, along with adults, are protected by general human rights rules, they also receive additional support under many human rights instruments. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example, proclaims that:

Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) also provide special consideration for children. ICESCR Article 10, for instance, states that:

Special measures of protection and assistance should be taken on behalf of all children and young persons without any discrimination for reasons of parentage or other conditions. Children and young persons should be protected from economic and social exploitation. Their employment in work harmful to their morals or health or dangerous to life or likely to hamper their normal development should be punishable by law. States should also set age limits below which the paid employment of child labour should be prohibited and punishable by law.

In addition to these provisions in general treaties, children’s rights have also gained prominence through their elaboration in dedicated human rights instruments. The premier international treaty on the subject is the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the most widely ratified of all international human rights instruments. The CRC sets out a series of rights that apply to children (defined as human beings below the age of eighteen) and mothers, including child-specific rights such as the protection of children’s best interests, parental guidance, survival and development, protection in the event of separation from parents, family reunification, kidnapping, and respect for the views of the child, in addition to rights of general application such as non-discrimination, freedom of expression, religion, association, education, and so on. Other child-specific human rights instruments include ILO Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour  and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child.

Approaching child protection through the lens of human rights is important because it envisages children not simply as the recipients of charity or the beneficiaries of protective measures, but rather as holders of rights and agents whose opinions and desires matter to decision-making. It emphasizes that children’s rights are not optional or a matter of a country’s or private organization’s good will, but rather an obligation of the state. In addition, it justifies a broad mandate focused on elements such as gender and equity and a ‘life-cycle approach,’ rather than a narrow one aimed at simply supplying food, shelter and basic health care as a way of meeting children’s immediate needs.

Because of its status as a UN project and its fundamental mission of “promot[ing] the rights of every child, everywhere, in everything the organization does,” UNICEF is a natural forum for human rights work with respect to children. All UN entities must abide by the UN Charter, which establishes human rights as a major institutional goal:

We the peoples of the United Nations determined to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in equal rights of men and women and nations large and small…

In this context, UNICEF’s work on children’s health, nutrition, sanitation, water, education, protection, and social inclusion directly contribute to the fulfillment of children’s human rights. Moreover, the fact that UNICEF has a presence in almost every country on earth makes it uniquely positioned to promote human rights around the world.

UNICEF has committed to framing its work via a human rights-based approach, with a particular focus on gender and equity. Its aim is not simply on meeting children’s needs, but also recognizing and realizing their human rights across a wide spectrum of activity. To this end, it has made the CRC a central component of its institutional framework. According to UNICEF’s mission statement:

UNICEF is guided by the Convention on the Rights of the Child and strives to establish children’s rights as enduring ethical principles and international standards of behaviour towards children.

As part of its efforts to protect children, UNICEF advocates on behalf of increasing ratification and implementation of the CRC and its Optional Protocols on the involvement of children in armed conflict and the sale of children, child prostitution, and child pornography. It provides policy and legal support to states to assist them in implementing the CRC domestically. And it provides support to the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the CRC’s treaty body, in the form of advice, assistance, monitoring implementation, and the preparation of reports, as envisaged in the CRC itself.

UNICEF also cites the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) as central to its mandate and mission. CEDAW provides the basis for UNICEF’s drive for gender equity in its programmes. UNICEF stresses the links between CEDAW and the CRC, citing both as fundamental to its work on the rights of girls. To better protect girls and mothers, UNICEF has adopted a Gender Action Plan for 2014-2017 that outlines in detail the steps UNICEF plans to take in the medium-term to operationalize its ongoing commitment to mainstreaming gender throughout its work programme.

Also, UNICEF adopts an “equity strategy” that is used to translate its commitment to rights into action. Via this equity policy, UNICEF is “committed to ensuring special protection for the most disadvantaged children—victims of war, disasters, extreme poverty, all forms of violence and exploitation and those with disabilities.” As such, it pays special attention to children who are also members of minority groups, is indigenous people, is disabled, or are particularly affected by poverty and violence.

UNICEF has committed to applying a human rights-based approach to all of its programming. A recent independent evaluation found that within the UN system UNICEF is a leader in the application of the human rights-based approach, playing a key role on human rights issues within the UN system, as well as in integrating a human rights-based approach into humanitarian and emergency frameworks, and in programmes at the country level. While the evaluation identified a number of points on which UNICEF could strengthen its human rights work (for example, with respect to the lack of strong, disaggregated data to support nondiscrimination efforts, the lack of success at ensuring transparency with respect to rights holders, and the unsystematic application of human rights-based approachprinciples throughout the programme development process), its overall conclusion was that UNICEF was a very strong actor in the human rights field.

All of UNICEF’s programmes, in some sense, aimed at protecting the rights of children. Some examples of its human rights work for children include:

Conducting Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys that collect statistically sound, internationally comparable data on more than 100 indicators to assess the situation of children and women, including in the areas of education, health, gender equality, rights, and protection;

Providing emergency supplies (in over 40 different combinations) consisting of items needed for children’s immediate survival and recovery from trauma in situations of natural and man-made disasters and conflict;

Promoting the rights of girls to education and training through the United Nations Girls Education Initiative;

Working with governments, civil society, communities, and others to design and implement an array of programmes and policies on early childhood development;

Mainstreaming disability such that children with and without disability are included together in equally supportive environments across UNICEF programmes;

Working toward making schools and home healthier for children through water, hygiene, and sanitation (WASH) programmes that work with governments to create the conditions for ensuring access to clean water, promoting hand washing, and capacity-building;

Developing resources and policy tools for addressing child poverty, including through enhanced measuring criteria such as integrated household surveys.

Summary:

Although it generally has a strong record on human rights issues, some questions and criticism of UNICEF’s approach remain. In 2004, for example, an article in the medical journal The Lancet criticized UNICEF’s move to a human rights-based approach, arguing that it brought with it an unfortunate turn away from the health needs of children and a focus on child mortality and morbidity. Several authors have also criticized UNICEF’s policies on adoption, arguing that UNICEF’s discouragement of international adoption programmes has led to decreased welfare for orphans.

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Reference

  • UNICEF, “Strategic Plan, 2014-2017: Realizing the rights of every child, especially the most disadvantaged,” 11 July 2013, UN Doc. E/ICEF/2013/21, para. 1.
  • UNICEF, “Mission Statement,” available at http://www.unicef.org/about/who/index_mission.html UNICEF, “Strategic Plan, 2014-2017: Realizing the rights of every child, especially the most disadvantaged,” 11 July 2013, UN Doc. E/ICEF/2013/21, para. 19.
  • UNICEF, “Mission Statement,” available at http://www.unicef.org/about/who/index_mission.html Covenant of the League of Nations (1919), art. 23.
  • Declaration on the Rights of the Child, Records of the Fifth Assembly, Supplement No. 23, League of Nations Official Journal (1924).
  • Philip Alston & John Tobin, “Laying the Foundations for Children’s Rights: An Independent Study of some Key Legal and Institutional Aspects of the Impact of the Convention on the Rights of the Child,” UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre Report (2005), at 6. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), art. 25.
  • International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966), art. 10(3).
    • Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989).
    • ILO Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour (1999).
    • African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (1990).
  • UNICEF, “Strategic Plan, 2014-2017: Realizing the rights of every child, especially the most disadvantaged,” 11 July 2013, UN Doc. E/ICEF/2013/21, para. 1.
    • UN Charter, at pmbl.
  • UNICEF, “Mission Statement,” available at http://www.unicef.org/about/who/index_mission.html Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), art. 45.
  • UNICEF, “Human Rights and Children,” available at http://www.unicef.org/policyanalysis/rights/index_62016.html
  • UNICEF Gender Action Plan 2014-2017, UN Doc. E/ICEF/2014/CRP.12.
  • UNICEF, “Strategic Plan, 2014-2017: Realizing the rights of every child, especially the most disadvantaged,” 11 July 2013, UN Doc. E/ICEF/2013/21, para. 1.
  • UNICEF, “Mission Statement,” available at http://www.unicef.org/about/who/index_mission.html UNICEF, “Global Evaluation of the Application of the Human Rights-Based Approach to UNICEF Programming” (March 2012) at v.
    • For additional information, visit http://mics.unicef.org/
    • For additional information, visit http://www.ungei.org/index.php
    • For additional information, visit http://www.unicef.org/earlychildhood/
    • For additional information, visit http://www.unicef.org/disabilities/index_65841.html For additional information, visit http://www.unicef.org/wash/index_3951.html
    • For additional information, visit http://www.unicef.org/socialpolicy/index_68822.html
  • Richard Horton, “UNICEF leadership 2005-2015: a Call for Strategic Change,” 364 The Lancet 2071 (2004).
  • Peter Roff, “The Tragedy of Children Left in Limbo,” US News & World Report (17 May 2013).
  • UNICEF, “Strategic Plan, 2014-2017: Realizing the rights of every child, especially the most disadvantaged,” 11 July 2013, UN Doc. E/ICEF/2013/21, para. 1.
  • UNICEF, “Mission Statement,” available at http://www.unicef.org/about/who/index_mission.html For additional information, visit http://mics.unicef.org/
    • For additional information, visit http://www.ungei.org/index.php
    • For additional information, visit http://www.unicef.org/earlychildhood/
    • For additional information, visit http://www.unicef.org/disabilities/index_65841.html For additional information, visit http://www.unicef.org/wash/index_3951.html
    • For additional information, visit http://www.unicef.org/socialpolicy/index_68822.html