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Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management Crisis and Emergency Management Newsletter Website |
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March
2006
Volume
10 - Number 2 |
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The United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, continues to fight for the rights and lives of children around the world. Currently, UNICEF is responding to disasters worldwide, including the Horn of Africa, Sudan, and Haiti, as well as focusing on increasing awareness to the AIDS pandemic. Additionally, UNICEF is responding to the recent mudslide in the Philippines, sending a relief team which includes needed medical staff, supplies, and relief kits. More than 8 million people, including 1.2 million children, across the Horn of Africa are facing the worst drought in a decade. This drought is having severe impacts on the countries of Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and Djibouti and is threatening the lives of 1.5 million children. UNICEF has launched a campaign to raise awareness and to raise $16 million that will allow UNICEF to bring aid to this region. UNICEF has been working with the governments of the affected countries as well as with the World Food Program and other international aid organizations to bring feeding programs into the region. In the Nuba Mountain region of central Sudan, UNICEF is focused on building and rehabilitating the region’s water system to ensure safe drinking water. This area has been adversely impacted by ongoing conflict that makes fetching water dangerous as well as difficult. In the past, children had to forgo their education as they were burdened by the daily task of fetching water. This has now changed across this region as approximately 200 hand pumps have been rehabilitated and fifty new wells have been drilled, benefiting more than 200,000 people so far. In Côte d’Ivoire, renewed violence has again raised concerns that thousands of former child combatants from the past civil and ethnic conflict could once again be re-recruited to fight with the rebels. It is estimated that more than 5,000 children have been associated with armed groups in this conflict. Preventing the re-recruitment and reintegrating former child combatants back into society has become one of UNICEF’s most urgent priorities in this region of Western Africa. Recently elected Haitian President Rene Preval has made a committment to helping children the top of his political agenda. As the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti has been plagued by political violence. Children are often recruited for armed gangs, used as drug dealers, or just living on the streets. President Preval was one of 23 presidential candidates who signed a white paper, “The Political Agenda for Children,” that specifies actions in education, child protection, HIV/AIDS, and lays down a plan to lift Haitian children out of poverty. UNICEF will work with President Preval to help mobilize support for the children of Haiti. UNICEF recently brought together high-level representatives from 90 international organizations, NGOs and governments at the Global Partners Forum in an effort to improve the responses throughout the world to the children affected by a growing AIDS pandemic. It is estimated that by 2010 in sub-Saharan Africa, 18 million children will be orphaned by the disease and 4 million children will have been infected without access to proper treatment. For further information: www.unicef.org |