UNICEF NEW BOARD OF DIRECTORS WRAP UPS ITS FIRST MEETING

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From: https://www.unicef.org/about/execboard/index_102571.html

NEW YORK, United States of America, 8 February 2018 – Across the globe, nearly 1 in 4 children are living in countries affected by emergencies. These children are subjected to direct threats and human rights violations – from malnutrition and disease to violence, forced migration and recruitment into armed groups.

In the first regular session of the Executive Board for 2018, the Board discussed this critical issue during an update on humanitarian action for children, as well as in the context of a review of lessons learned from evaluations of its emergency work conducted from 2010 to 2016.

Emergency preparedness and humanitarian response efforts in 2017

In 2017, the number of complex and large-scale emergencies was unprecedented. While protracted conflicts in the Central African Republic, Iraq, Somalia, South Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, Yemen and the Lake Chad Basin continued to evolve, new crises unfolded in Rakhine State, Myanmar and the Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Latin America and Caribbean region was devastated by a series of powerful hurricanes that left more than a million people in need of humanitarian assistance.

“As the humanitarian caseload continues to grow, and as countries face more complex and large-scale emergencies with greater frequency, the importance of boosting the ability of UNICEF to respond faster and more flexibly at the onset of the crisis cannot be over-emphasized,” said Mr. Manuel Fontaine, Director, Office of Emergency Programmes.

New approaches have helped UNICEF to respond to these crises faster and more effectively. In Bangladesh, UNICEF invested in emergency preparedness and response training for staff in the two years prior to the August crisis triggered by the influx of Rohingya.

In the Caribbean, UNICEF’s response was dual-track: humanitarian aid coupled with long-term recovery and resilience support to affected communities. In the Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a rapid response mechanism was deployed in June 2017, which assisted more than 1 million vulnerable people in the region over the course of the year.

UNICEF will continue to work with partners and United Nations agencies to better quantify the returns on investment in emergency preparedness. The Ready to Respond project – a partnership with the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the World Food Programme – analysed previous emergency preparedness investments, and found that on UNICEF projects, more than $4 was saved for every $1 spent.

The organization is in the process of rolling out a new system to enhance its early warning and preparedness. The system will be supported by an online Emergency Preparedness Platform, and is designed to ensure that preparedness is mainstreamed across UNICEF country, regional and global offices.

Rohingya refugee children sit outside UNICEF’s Kokil Learning Centre at the Unchiprang makeshift settlement in Teknaf, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.

Encouraging progress in humanitarian response

In recent years, UNICEF has worked hard to improve the support and services it provides to the children and communities affected by emergencies. Evaluations have contributed to these efforts and have helped UNICEF to learn lessons and improve its capacity to respond quickly and effectively to emergencies.

In this session, the Board discussed a synthesis of UNICEF evaluations of humanitarian action from 2010 to 2016. Overall, the evaluations reflect an organization that has evolved considerably over the past seven years. UNICEF has successfully implemented new procedures and has developed new ways of working and knowledge sharing. The organization’s humanitarian responses have been relevant and aligned with humanitarian needs. Yet some weaknesses in UNICEF humanitarian action have been identified.

In relation to the findings, H.E. Mr. Tore Hattrem, Permanent Representative of Norway to the United Nations and 2018 President of the UNICEF Executive Board, said “this is the kind of cogent feedback that programme designers, policy advisers and financial strategists need to improve UNICEF’s humanitarian responses, an area that commands an increasing portion of its budget.”

In comments made at the start of the session on Tuesday, Ambassador Hattrem cited his experience of UNICEF’s work across the humanitarian-development continuum. “As an Ambassador in Afghanistan, I saw first-hand how UNICEF’s education programming in a challenging humanitarian setting contributed to improved literacy rates and access to education for children, particularly girls.”

In its response to the findings of the evaluation synthesis, the UNICEF management welcomed the analysis as an opportunity to take stock of priority issues, and noted that it was a critical reference that had fed into the development of the Strategic Plan, 2018–2021. A number of the issues outlined in the evaluations had been reflected in the Plan, including strengthening ties between humanitarian and development programming, improving results-based management and supporting inter-agency cohesion.

Two girls show the educational and recreational supplies they received during a UNICEF distribution in Antigua, following Hurricane Irma.

Closing of the first regular session

By the end of the session on Wednesday evening, the Board had adopted four draft decisions: one on the approval of three new country programmes for Jordan, Ghana and Mauritania and a common country programme for Cabo Verde; another on the Private Fundraising and Partnerships 2018 workplan and budget; a third on the UNICEF financial report and audited financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2016 and report of the Board of Auditors; and the fourth decision was one that encompassed several evaluation items.

UNICEF Executive Director Ms. Henrietta H. Fore also spoke to UNICEF’s humanitarian efforts, stressing that “serving children in the midst of complex, fast-moving emergencies will always be at the core of what UNICEF does.” She said that she was hearing the call from the Member States of the need to increasingly view this short-term work through a long-term lens. “When we support communities’ efforts to rebuild schools or water systems, health systems or nutrition systems in the aftermath of an emergency, we are not only making these communities more resilient, but we are also supporting their long-term development. The humanitarian-development continuum will remain at the heart of all that we do, across all of our programmes,” she said.

In closing the session, Ambassador Hattrem emphasized the importance of evaluations and continual improvements in UNICEF’s work. “In an era of shrinking budgets and ever more complex, multifaceted needs, we need to know what works, and what doesn’t and why,” he said. “The evaluations that we saw in the plan for global evaluations promise to provide valuable lessons for ever more improvement in UNICEF’s results.”

He also expressed his gratitude to the UNICEF staff, many of whom live and work in areas involved in conflict. “I would like to congratulate the staff of UNICEF all over the world, the thousands of men and women whose commitment, enthusiasm and optimism about the possibility of a better future for children and for the world are the lifeblood of this great organization,“ he said, thus ending this first Board session for the year on a high note.

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