United Nations

UNICEF has a fascinating report today looking at the life of a 15-year-old named John from Uganda. John is just one of many children confronting the dangers of migration in Uganda. UNICEF-supported transit centers aim to address the problem.

You can read the report here.

UNICEF recently issued their fourth stocktaking report examining the devastating impact that the AIDS epidemic has on children. The report, which focuses a lot on the prevention of mother-to-child transmission, underscores the urgency in “establishing early infant diagnosis and preventing HIV transmission to babies.”

You can read the full report here, and watch UNICEF’s video report here:

Last weekend, 600+ high school students from Lutheran churches across five states gathered in Estes Park, Colorado to join ONE in the fight against extreme poverty and disease. High up at the base of the Rockies, the Rocky Mountain Synod Youth learned about the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and what they could do to help achieve them.

I was privileged to give the opening message, where I talked about how living out the MDGS was the modern day equivalent of caring for our global neighbors. Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson also spoke on Saturday, noting that “working for justice and peace meant making your voice heard.” He said that being a part of ONE was a great way for students to work with their friends from other faith communities.

It was a weekend of many exciting firsts, too: youth groups from Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming and Texas all kicked-off the Lutheran Malaria Initiative. Their aim? To mobilize 8 million Lutherans in the fight against malaria. At the end of the weekend, the students all then went down the mountain, energized to organize their communities at home.

Check out this post from our partner organization UNICEF.

Food security is a huge issue for UNICEF. But UNICEF is painfully aware that food security is not just about food—it’s also about nutrition. UNICEF’s recent report “Tracking Progress On Child and Maternal Nutrition,” highlights both progress and challenges in ensuring adequate nutrition for mothers and children.

Maternal and child undernutrition is the underlying cause of death in more than a third of children under the age of five. An estimated 200 million children under five also suffer from stunting. Stunted children are too short for their ages, reflecting nutritional deficiencies and illnesses that occur during the most critical growth and development periods in their lives. Once stunting occurs, it is very difficult to reverse—prevention is the only solution.

To prevent child undernutrition, we must focus on the first one thousand days in a child’s life—from conception to his or her second birthday. This is the most critical period for ensuring that children develop properly both physically and mentally. There are simple interventions that can make a big difference. Exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months and continued breastfeeding until the age of two has a big impact. Providing essential vitamins and minerals (in particular Vitamin A, iodine, iron, zinc, and folate), either through supplementation or food fortification, is a proven solution that costs just a few cents per child.

There are major successes that we can celebrate in addressing child undernutrition. UNICEF’s partnership with Kiwanis to make iodized salt available in even the poorest countries has protected millions of children from iodine deficiency disorders, which affect brain development. Coverage of life-saving Vitamin A supplements has increased to close to 90 per cent in the least developed countries. But there is still much to do. With your continued support and focus, we will make a difference. So keep up your fight for food and nutrition security for people everywhere.

-Mark Engman, Director, Public Policy and Advocacy, U.S. Fund for UNICEF

UNICEF USA’s Fieldnotes Blog has a great report from a rural health clinic in Zambia– specifically post-natal and prevention of mother-to-child treatment (PMTCT) care.

The whole piece is worth a read. Excerpts below:

Rolina is HIV positive and is enrolled in the clinic’s PMTCT program. She and her husband Terrance married in 2002 and they have three children; Terrance is also HIV positive. Both Rolina and Terrance are doing everything in their power to ensure that little Brenda stays safe and healthy which is not the case for Brenda’s older sister Constance. Constance is 4 years old and HIV positive. Constance is on pediatric treatment which is keeping her strong. Their older brother Clayton does what he can at 7 years old to look after his two younger sisters.

Mother to child transmission (children from HIV positive mothers being infected during pregnancy or delivery) in Zambia is the second most important factor of transmission. PMTCT provides parents with hope but more importantly if the treatment is followed correctly it provides parents with a healthy child.

Terrance and Rolina are leaders in their community. They are open about their status in hopes of making a difference in other people lives. Terrance runs an HIV/AIDS couples support group in Keemba and sees 20-25 couples each week. Rolina adhering to the PMTCT program stopped breastfeeding Brenda at 6 months despite the statement this makes to the community. Mothers who bottle feed their child are questioned and sometimes frowned upon. But Rolina does not get discouraged because she knows that breastfeeding past 6 months increases the risk of her child becoming infected.

As I posted below, today is the kickoff of the World Food Summit in Rome. This weekend, the Director General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Jacques Diouf, undertook a 24-hour fast to protest the astonishing figure of over 1 billion hungry people around the world. The FAO is also currently running a campaign against global hunger, which you should check out at www.1billionhungry.org.

Today marks the opening of the World Food Summit on Global Food Security which is being held in Rome through Wednesday. The meeting, which brings together officials from the UN food security-related institutions (like the UN Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO] and the World Food Program [WFP]) and an estimated 60 heads of state, is designed to garner political will to address global food insecurity. The UN FAO has asked those in attendance at the Summit to commit $44 billion per year in official development assistance (ODA) for agricultural development, and to adopt 2025 as a deadline for eradicating global hunger.

Over 1 billion people worldwide suffer from food insecurity, and the challenge ahead will only be exacerbated by climate change, population growth, and rural-urban migration. UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon cautioned today that food security cannot be tackled without addressing climate change. “Food security and climate change are deeply interconnected,” he said. “Today’s event is critical, so is Copenhagen.” The FAO predicts that we will need to grow 70 percent more food by 2050. At the same time, however, farmers, particularly in places like Africa where crops are rain-fed and rainfall is becoming increasingly erratic, could see drastic declines in harvests.

In the lead-up to the Summit last week there were concerns about attendance and outcomes. News reports indicated that the Summit might not set measurable targets for addressing food insecurity, and a draft communiqué released last week by the FAO contained promising language, but also lacked specific and measurable goals. Thus far at the Summit leaders have only reaffirmed the first Millennium Development Goal of halving hunger and poverty by 2015; it seems unlikely that the UN’s more ambitious targets will be ratified.

In the next few days we’ll update you about happenings at the Summit. The coverage of this event will wrap up our Food Security in Focus series. We hope you’ve enjoyed the content here on the website as much as we’ve enjoyed tracking and writing it! And we will, of course, continue to keep you posted about news in the agriculture and food security sector.

Last week leaders from the United States and European Union met in Washington DC for the regular US-EU Summit.

The team at ONE has reviewed the summit’s declaration [PDF] and picked out some of the key points.

Overall the document contains some very positive language on the need to work together to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015 and development has been ratcheted up the agenda as a focus for cooperation. There’s also a separate annex on Development. The main point is that the US and EU want to work together with more urgency towards the MDG Summit and up to 2015:

‘we recognize that a coordinated international effort is needed to assist developing countries accelerate progress towards the MDGs’

The Declaration itself pledges to re-launch US-EU dialogue on development, and the first meeting to re-launch of this dialogue will happen at ministerial level very soon. Ministerial level meetings will thereafter be annual, with meetings of the re-launched High Level Consultative Group on Development to be held in between.

The Annex to the declaration outlines 3 areas for close cooperation between the US and EU:

• Food security and agricultural development: initial focus on Africa, will join efforts in a Global Partnership for Agriculture, Food Security and Nutrition; support for the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme.
• Climate change: focus on country-driven adaptation strategies and a pledge to concentrate on the development aspects of climate change.
• MDGs: ‘recognizes that a coordinated international effort is needed to assist developing countries accelerate progress towards the MDGs’. As well as Overseas Development Assistance, policy coherence for development, aid effectiveness and new innovative financing mechanisms mentioned.There are plentiful references to measuring outputs and results of development cooperation as well as a focus on Accra and aid effectiveness.

The declaration comes at a timely moment at the beginning of a new European Commission and Parliamentary mandate in Brussels, and gives us a good kick-off to help ensure that achievement of the MDGs remains high on the political agenda in both Brussels and Washington DC.

-Eloise Todd

In Zambia, a rainy season has raised fears of a cholera outbreak. To help prevent a cholera outbreak, UNICEF and its partners have launched a new advocacy campaign called “Your Life is in Your Hands.”

The key to the campaign’s effectiveness, according to UNICEF, is that it relies on peer-to-peer advocacy, meaning that children and young people become effective ambassadors in spreading the importance of good hygiene to their peers. The campaign is being rolled out “through town–hall meetings for school children, follow-up events in schools, radio public service announcements and a UNICEF cartoon character named SOPO.”

You can read more about “Your Life is in Your Hands” here.

Today is World Pneumonia Day and you can watch the Global Pneumonia Summit live right now.

Child advocates from around the world are gathering in New York City to hear the latest on how we can raise the profile of child pneumonia and get policymakers everywhere to act.

Speakers include:

• Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University and Special Advisor to the United Nations’ Secretary-General
• Singer-songwriter and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Angélique Kidjo
• ABC News’ senior health and medical editor Dr. Richard Besser
• WHO and UNICEF present a new report, the Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Pneumonia, which provides a road map for preventing and treat child pneumonia in the world’s poorest countries.
• And leading global health experts, philanthropists, faith-based leaders, corporate representatives and child advocates to begin to change the way the world responds to the #1 killer of children—pneumonia.