Children caught in crises: UNICEF’s role in humanitarian emergencies - Part I

Season 1, episode 8

Children caught in crises: UNICEF’s role in humanitarian emergencies - Part I

Discover how UNICEF keeps children safe when disasters strike without warning, and hear from young people on the 30th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Producer: Priyadarshini Mitra

Sound Mix: Chandra Bulucon

Episode Transcript:

[00:00:01.99] [BOMB BLASTS]

[00:00:03.49] [CHILDREN SCREAMING]

[00:00:12.96] The sounds you just heard are children in humanitarian crises, and no child should ever have to hear those sounds. On this month's podcast, we talk about UNICEF in humanitarian crises, the work of UNICEF with children in emergencies. Hello, I'm David Morley, the president and CEO of UNICEF Canada and the host of our For Every Child podcast.

[00:00:40.56] [MUSIC PLAYING]

[00:00:50.29] UNICEF has a long history with emergencies. You may not know this, but our name originally stood for the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund. We were created in 1946 to support children's suffering from the devastation of the Second World War.

[00:01:09.28] American diplomat, Maurice Pate agreed to lead the new organization, but he had one condition. UNICEF must help every child regardless of whether their country had won or lost the war. And For Every Child is still at the heart of our work.

[00:01:30.39] Over the years, UNICEF's mandate has expanded geographically. Now we work in nearly every country and territory in the world, and our mission includes meeting the long-term needs of children too. But responding to humanitarian emergencies is still at the core of our very essence, keeping children safe, healthy, and getting their education back on track as soon as possible.

[00:01:58.85] When an emergency strikes, whether it's a natural disaster or an armed conflict, children are always the most vulnerable. Like a young Syrian refugee girl I met in Duhok, Kurdistan, Iraq. She was 12 years old and three years out of school. She had forgotten how to read.

[00:02:20.60] But education provides hope, and classrooms are places where children can laugh and play, and well, they can be children. Today, nearly a quarter of the world's children live in countries affected by conflict or natural disaster. In any given year, we respond to more than 300 emergency situations around the world.

[00:02:44.33] And as the world's largest humanitarian organization focused on children, UNICEF is the lead organization for protecting children and providing them with safe water, sanitation, hygiene, nutrition, and education. This role includes working with partners and other humanitarian organizations to ensure a coordinated and effective response to emergencies.

[00:03:10.74] Now emergency responses were traditionally focused on the short term. The response to a crisis, a sudden movement of people, an earthquake, a hurricane was clear. And camps for displaced children and their families tended to be temporary. But this is changing.

[00:03:29.84] More children today have been forced to flee violence and leave their homes than at any time since the end of World War II. The changing nature of emergencies presents a new challenge. How do we carry out our work when we know that an emergency will likely require a prolonged response that fulfills all the needs of children, including education and health care?

[00:03:54.30] While most people may think of UNICEF as a development agency, almost a third of our budget every year is dedicated to our emergency response work and in today's podcast, I'll try to break down how UNICEF really makes this happen.

[00:04:12.32] Every day, in more than 190 countries and territories, UNICEF is there with staff, equipment, and just as importantly, trusted relationships with communities and governments. So when disaster strikes, we can rapidly assess the needs and take action to address the most vital aspects of survival.

[00:04:35.63] Every emergency is unique. So the challenges of delivering life-saving supplies are seldom the same. Whether that's getting food and medicine to 40 different islands, finding pilots who can land planes in a spiral, or locating new supply routes when a country closes its border, being prepared is the key to saving children's lives in an emergency.

[00:04:59.57] UNICEF has three global supply hubs in Copenhagen, Dubai, and Panama. Each of these always have at least enough emergency supplies for a population of 250,000 people for three months. And thanks to our logistics systems and partners, we can deliver life-saving supplies almost anywhere, including the hardest-to-reach places.

[00:05:27.34] Our Copenhagen warehouse is the largest humanitarian warehouse in the world, and Susanne is here to tell us about what an emergency looks like in the warehouse.

[00:05:38.59] My name is Susanne Fraisse, and I'm the warehouse manager here in Supply Division Warehouse in Copenhagen. And I've worked with UNICEF for 26 years now. When an emergency hits, I mean, everybody basically goes together as one big team, one big family in order to optimize all efforts.

[00:06:02.14] In the warehouse, we have very, very little time to pick, pack, and prepare for shipments. Overall, we have an emergency response time of 72 hours. For any emergency, we are on call 24 hours, and I can have staff on site within half an hour.

[00:06:20.05] That sure is a rapid response. How have you seen the warehouse change over the 26 years that you've been there?

[00:06:27.17] So in my 26 years with UNICEF, I have seen many things. I've been in almost any center here in supply division. The former warehouse we had which was a totally conventional warehouse, it was really appealing to me to see how we could improve our efficiency and throughput by moving from a warehouse where everything was very manual to the high-bay warehouse. It's fully automated-- operated by eight robots, and where we have people working is really where the human touch is making a difference.

[00:07:06.98] What is your wish for children in emergencies?

[00:07:11.22] When I see children being part of a humanitarian crisis, it really makes me sad because these children, they are so vulnerable. They are so defenseless. And actually, they are not even asked to be on the Earth and suddenly they are just part of a big crisis. So to me, it really-- it appeals in the sense that I want to help. I want to make a difference. I want to save them, do whatever I can, and this is what I believe in. And this is why I think that I'm on the right spot to make a difference here.

[00:07:50.08] And colleagues like Susana definitely make a difference. Thanks to them, UNICEF has emergency supplies pre-positioned in areas that are regularly affected by natural disasters. But the majority of emergencies happen suddenly and without warning, and being nimble is just as important as being prepared.

[00:08:13.11] Daniel Timme, chief of communications for UNICEF Mozambique, saw this very clearly in Mozambique in March of this year.

[00:08:22.46] Mozambique is a disaster-prone country. We have droughts, we have floodings, we have cyclones on a regular basis. And so, UNICEF together with other humanitarian partners and the government of Mozambique, we are preparing for such events. And actually, as UNICEF, we have pre-positioned humanitarian goods all over the country in different warehouses so that we-- in case that a cyclone hits at a certain point in the country-- we can start with the distribution of these goods very early on and bring relief to the population.

[00:09:00.93] So even in Beira, we had warehouse where we had tarpaulin sheets, high-energy biscuits, water-purifying systems, medical kits, everything one needs for an early response to a disaster. But unfortunately, even this warehouse was destroyed because the cyclone was so strong, and we could only save a little part of these goods and distribute them.

[00:09:30.83] What is new for us is the frequency and the intensity of these disasters. Never in recorded history we have seen that two cyclones of this major strength hit Mozambique in one season.

[00:09:47.72] Daniel, can you take us through what the first few days after the cyclones looked like?

[00:09:53.09] I remember the morning after the cyclone. It was a very scary moment because all communication systems in the city of Beira and the surrounding areas were cut off for us, as a humanitarian organization who wants to rapidly react, this is like a nightmare because the first thing we need to do is to assess the situation. And none of that was possible at that moment because there was no information coming in.

[00:10:20.90] And it was impossible for us to get to the disaster zone. And only after two days we managed to bring in the first assessment team when the airport was opened again. And us and other humanitarian organizations became aware of the dimension of that terrible disaster. The search and rescue operation started with help from all over the world.

[00:10:48.23] As UNICEF, of course, we started to help these people distribute the necessary food and treat people with medicine, but of course, the children were the most important. And due to the way these rescue teams work, there were many children who arrived without their parents, and we were worried that many of these parents wouldn't be alive anymore.

[00:11:14.12] Luckily in the end, it turned out that most of these children could be reunited with their parents. But in the first moment, it was quite a shock. We have the cluster system in place. That means that certain organizations like UNICEF take charge of certain aspects of the humanitarian aid to coordinate all these aid workers.

[00:11:35.81] For example, UNICEF is responsible for the coordination in water, sanitation, and hygiene, and nutrition. The second thing is, of course, assess the situation too so that we can tailor the right response for the people in need.

[00:11:54.14] The conditions sound especially difficult. They're traumatic for the children affected by the cyclones.

[00:12:00.74] The impact both cyclones had on the lives of children here in Mozambique was just immense. First, schools were destroyed. Health centers were destroyed. Houses were destroyed. People were without shelter. They didn't have health care, and we couldn't even think of going to school anymore.

[00:12:20.18] We would be there in this center in the Samora Machel school and just see these wet and crying and desperate groups of children arrive. And then, we had to first see with our protection experts and health experts-- is there acute medical problems-- and refer them to medical treatment or just give them warm clothes and see that they are taken care of and also get some psychosocial support because this is obviously a very traumatizing situation.

[00:12:55.94] So it's very important that we create spaces-- we call child-friendly spaces where children can, even in that terrible situation around them, find some safety and security and even sometimes play and maybe sing. And at the same time, these child-friendly spaces give us the chance to analyze if there's problems with the children, health problems, or sometimes, also problems of abuse because children are very vulnerable to abuse in such a chaotic situation.

[00:13:29.36] The second impact was the flooding. People were losing their houses, were in very desperate situation as we've seen in these dramatic pictures on television. And then, the third part of these disasters, because there was so much water out there, and it was so hot after both disasters, the cholera broke out.

[00:13:52.48] You might know, it is a disease that is transferred by contaminated water and contaminated food. One thing that we as UNICEF managed to do and that was essential to contain the outbreak of the cholera was the rehabilitation of the water system in the city of Beira only after 10 days.

[00:14:15.55] And this in combination with the massive vaccination campaign that we organized together with WHO-- 900,000 people were vaccinated against the cholera-- and the communication campaign where we explained the importance of the vaccination and where we explained how important it is, especially in this kind of situation to keep up very essential hygiene measures at home after 6,000 people were infected.

[00:14:46.96] Finally, we saw the new cases were going down. And finally, we could then close the cholera treatment centers. And that was probably our biggest success in this response, and it probably saved thousands of lives.

[00:15:04.39] That's inspiring to hear. Almost eight months on, how would you describe the situation now?

[00:15:10.60] Eight months on, the emergency accommodation centers have long closed. Many people have rebuilt their houses or were able to return to their families. But there are still around 80,000 people who have really lost everything, and it is our role as UNICEF and other humanitarian actors to ensure the provision of basic services, health care, nutrition, of course, people need shelter, water, proper hygiene, they need latrines.

[00:15:43.57] Then of course, we also, from the very beginning, very concerned that the education for these children is not interrupted. And so, in this accommodation, in these resettlement areas, we are running temporary schools.

[00:15:59.33] And at the same time, we are working on the rehabilitation of schools and the rehabilitation of health centers in a way that in the future-- if another cyclone hits or if another flooding occurs-- that these houses and buildings are more resilient to these disasters and will not come down in the first storm that hits again.

[00:16:26.29] What is the biggest challenge for emergencies like Cyclone Idai and Kenneth?

[00:16:31.99] One of the biggest challenges of this disaster response was that the world seemed to be quickly forgetting about it. Mozambique is a country which is not on the radar necessarily in the Western world. After the initial positive response that we saw that many people showed solidarity, after a certain time, we just have to realize there is too much going on in the world. And so, this got quickly forgotten.

[00:17:01.48] The problem is that the needs here didn't stop quickly. We have to help the people to get back on their feet again and enable them to help themselves to start a new life. And that's a long-term perspective, a long-term challenge on which we have to work, and we need the resources to do that because to say it very drastically, what does it help if we first save a child's life if it later has to die of preventable diseases because there is no health care available?

[00:17:36.64] That's such a moving message, Daniel. Indeed, the world is often guilty of forgetting disasters when they depart from the news headlines. It is easy to feel despair and hopelessness when images of human tragedy flood the news. But when we look closely, the picture changes. You see people caring for and helping each other, even complete strangers. That's what humanitarianism is all about. People working together to build a better world.

[00:18:10.54] Against the backdrop of a changing world order 30 years ago, world leaders came together and made a historic commitment to children. On the 20th of November, 1989, they made a promise to every child to protect and fulfill their rights by adopting an international legal framework, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

[00:18:35.70] And UNICEF is the only agency named in the convention. It's our duty to promote and protect the rights of children especially when the world begins to forget. To celebrate the 30 years of the Convention, let's hear from children themselves.

[00:18:58.05] They say children should be seen and not heard. They say, you'll understand when you're older, you're just a kid. But a kid swam for three hours on the open sea to save 18 lives and became an activist for refugees. A kid broke through barriers to keep martyred families together and delivered a message of hope.

[00:19:22.08] Let us fight with love, faith, and courage so that our families will not be destroyed.

[00:19:30.69] A kid was forced to kill in a brutal civil war and became a human rights activist freeing other children from violence. A kid fought for a girl's right to education, was shot in the head in retaliation, and won the Nobel Prize.

[00:19:47.78] This award is not just for me. It is for those forgotten children who want education, who want peace, who want change.

[00:19:58.70] And a kid spoke truth to power, inspiring a historic movement against climate change.

[00:20:04.55] We, kids, shouldn't have to do this. I wish that the adults would take their responsibility and do this instead. But since no one is doing anything, we have to.

[00:20:14.39] Kids are speaking up. Kids are demanding their rights. Kids are acting now for a better tomorrow. What will you do?

[00:20:22.71] [MUSIC PLAYING]

[00:20:43.30] The kids have thrown the gauntlet to you. On the 5th of December, we launch our annual global appeal, The Humanitarian Action for Children 2020, that will highlight the situation of children living in the world's most difficult crises, and we request your support to help those children overcome extraordinary challenges.

[00:21:06.79] You, our listeners, can make a difference to the lives of children affected by emergencies by making a donation at UNICEF.Ca/Emergencies. On next month's podcast, we'll hear more about this appeal and what happens when emergencies last for several years. We'll talk about what UNICEF calls protracted emergencies.

[00:21:32.94] Well, we've come to the end of this podcast. We so hope you enjoyed listening. Thank you.

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