THINK OF THE CHILDREN
REGARDING Douglas A. Sylva’s “Trick or Treat Feminism” (Mar. 5): UNICEF has only one agenda, which is to save and improve the lives of children. This is done by furthering the Millennium Development Goals–the quantifiable targets that address serious issues facing humanity. UNICEF has always placed importance on the health and well-being of women as mothers and as important members of their families, communities, and nations. Addressing issues of women’s health and well-being does not detract from our focus on children. On the contrary, they are inextricably linked.
Unhealthy and malnourished mothers are less likely to give birth to healthy children. Ensuring that children thrive begins before they are born; it begins with making sure that their mothers have access to nutrition, health care, safe water and sanitation, and education. Simply put, children need healthy mothers.
Our mission and work are also tied to the strength and independence of the family as a whole. UNICEF believes that the best environment for raising children is within a loving, supportive family. UNICEF wants strong families, healthy mothers, responsible fathers, and support services and assistance that will help parents and families do better by their children. We strive to reunite families separated during natural disasters and civil conflict and work to support the millions of children who have lost one or both parents to AIDS. UNICEF has worked tirelessly to improve the lives of children by providing them with nutrition, health care, education, and protection. UNICEF devotes more than half of its budget to early childhood development, immunization, and programs that tackle such childhood killers as malaria, pneumonia, diarrhea, and malnutrition. UNICEF’s work is as broad and complex as the world around us. Children continue to be immunized against deadly diseases; provided with access to safe water and sanitation; and have access to schools where girls and boys are protected from violence, abuse, and exploitation. UNICEF’s work also supports the millions of children whose lives have been devastated by HIV/AIDS and gives young people the tools they need to protect themselves from the pandemic. Sylva’s distortion of UNICEF’s mission does a disservice to the world’s poorest children, as well as to the millions of loyal supporters–men, women, and children–who make our work possible.
SAAD HOURY
UNICEF, Division of
Policy and Planning
New York, N.Y.
DOUGLAS A. SYLVA RESPONDS: Although Saad Houry claims that I distort UNICEF’s agenda, Houry does not address the central argument of my article, that UNICEF’s 2007 State of the World’s Children report–a document solely about women–continues the radical feminist transformation of the agency begun under the leadership of Carol Bellamy. In fact, a hint of the current ideology of the agency can be seen in the very way in which Houry describes UNICEF’s priorities for parents: UNICEF seeks “healthy mothers,” but only “responsible fathers.” Aren’t healthy fathers also important to children? Houry makes the claim that “more than half of [UNICEF’s] budget” is still devoted to child health and survival, but, unfortunately, this is the same level of funding that UNICEF devoted to child survival during the Bellamy era, when the British medical journal Lancet lamented, “child survival must sit at the core of UNICEF’s advocacy and country work. Currently, and shamefully, it does not.”
Instead of joining the ever-burgeoning crowd of international organizations devoted to women’s issues, UNICEF should return to its original mandate of saving children, a mandate that made it the most respected agency in the United Nations system.
