Fieldnotes: Blogging on UNICEF's child survival work in the field
Entries from Fieldnotes tagged with 'child protection'
Light and hope in Angola
Melissa Madzel is the Corporate Philanthropy Manager for the U.S. Fund for UNICEF.
One of the greatest pleasures of working with UNICEF is being able to see that kids are the same, throughout the world. In a recent visit to Angola, I was reminded of this beautiful reality, which is unfortunately set against a backdrop of disparity and strife. The place where this was most evident was Lar Kuzola, a government-run home for children and a nearby foster home in the outskirts of Luanda, the capital city of Angola.
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| © UNICEF Angola/Hvass |
| Melissa Madzel shares the picture she's taken of a young girl at Lar Kuzola. |
UNICEF believes in institutionalization for children as a last resort, so UNICEF Angola partners with Lar Kuzola to help move children out of the institutionalized setting and into the homes of caring families - either foster families or providing services and support to reintegrate them into their families of origin. Lar Kuzola provides temporary shelter and care for up to 330 children at a time, from newborns to teenagers. The children have found their way to the home in a range of heartbreaking circumstances. Some of them have lost their parents to illness, while others have mental or physical disabilities that led to their abandonment, and yet others were accused of witchcraft for any number of reasons.
Churches call for action to advance global child survival
Martin Rendón is the Vice President for Public Policy & Advocacy at the U.S. Fund for UNICEF.
At a time of tight budgeting in Washington, supporters of global child survival are challenged to find sources to fund efforts to save children from dying of causes we can prevent. The U.S. Fund for UNICEF has joined with defense analysts, other child survival advocates, and a growing number of religious leaders to support the Global Security Priorities Resolution. This bipartisan Congressional resolution, H. Res. 278, calls for reductions in nuclear arms, with savings applied to global child survival and child hunger programs.
Through negotiations to reduce nuclear arsenals, savings of as much as $13 billion annually could be relocated in the budget to dismantle and secure nuclear weapons. Because our nation believes in helping children worldwide, and because poverty and neglect create fertile recruiting for terrorists, the resolution also targets some of the savings to fund child health and nutrition programs.
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| Logos of the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace (left) and the Lutheran World Federation. Both institutions endorsed the concept of using savings from nuclear arms reduction to meet the needs of children! |
World religious leaders see the need to set new global priorities that transfer resources from nuclear weapons to meeting the basic needs of children. The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and the Lutheran World Federation are among the groups that are calling for support for the global priorities initiative.
The Global Security Priorities Resolution has secured the number of cosponsors it needs to be considered by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. U.S. Fund for UNICEF President and CEO Caryl M. Stern has written to Committee Chairman Howard L. Berman (D-CA) to encourage him to schedule a vote on H. Res. 278 before Congress adjourns.
Please join us in asking your Representative to cosponsor the Global Security Priorities Resolution and to urge Chairman Berman to schedule it for a vote by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. With your help, our Representatives in Washington can make getting to Zero a foreign policy priority!
Ensuring the rights of children with disabilities
Today marks the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA, a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on disability. But much more needs to be done to include and support the disabled community--in developing countries and here in the U.S.
Refugee crisis in Uzbekistan
At least 100,000 people have now been admitted into Uzbekistan after violent fighting in neighboring Kyrgyzstan took hundreds of lives in the city of Osh
Inspired Kicks: Tshepo in South Africa
My name is Tshepo from South Africa. I'm 14 years old and I'm from the township of Thubelihle, outside Witbank. I go to school at the local High School where most of the windows have been broken or vandalized. There used to be no sport in our school before Lebo Mtshweng arrived. She works as a volunteer with SCORE which is an organization that helps community development through sport together with UNICEF. A lot of the kids used to lack confidence before we started playing football, but now they have so much more belief in themselves.
Ending armed recruitment and sexual exploitation is not an "option"
UNICEF hosted a special event today to commemorate the 10th anniversary of two critical agreements on international child protection. The protocols to protect children from sexual exploitation and from enforced combat have been adopted by more than 130 U.N. member states -- including the U.S.-- but Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told the audience and press at UNICEF that he wanted to see universal ratification by 2012.
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| © UNICEF/NYHQ2004-0654/Kate Brooks |
| Afghanistan - Mohammad Amin, 18, a former child soldier, looks at the countryside from atop the crumbling roof of a barracks in the village of Bagram on the Shomali Plain in the Central Region province of Parwan. |
Here here! Who will argue that every member of the United Nations should make a commitment to prevent the use of children as spies, soldiers, or human shields by all means available? Of course every nation must punish to the full extent of the law those who would prostitute, traffic or otherwise exploit our children! By all means, let's get the 50-odd states that haven't ratified the children in armed conflict protocol and the nearly 60 states that haven't moved against the sale of children to prove their commitments to these fundamental human rights.
And then let's get to work on the name of these baseline treaties: the Optional Protocols to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. (emphasis my own).
Last week, the Security Council received an annual report on the global landscape of children in armed conflict. For the first time, the report singled out persistent violators who recruit children and specific parties who killed, maimed and raped children as part of a battle-plan.
There were 25 entities on that list alone. And that was using "a conservative approach," according to the report.
The Special Representative to the Secretary General on Children and Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy, is a tough lady and an effective advocate. This past year she helped bring about action plans ending recruitment of child soldiers and release of current child combatants with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the Sudan People's Liberation Army and the Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist. Burundi has now been declared child-soldier free. This is great news. But at UNICEF we are particularly aware that putting pen to paper is only the first step. National governments must address the many underlying factors that breed exploitation ... including poverty, gender equality and education.
Getting all member states to commit to the Optional Protocols to the Convention on the Rights of the Child by 2012 is a great goal. Ensuring that compliance is not Optional is a better one.
Monday photo: the global state of child labor
Elizabeth Kiem is the online producer for unicefusa.org.
A new U.N. report presents good news and bad news on the subject of child labor.
A survey of conditions in 50 different countries published by the International Labor Organization found that while the number of girls and children under the age of 15 who are compelled to work has fallen, the number of boys age 15-17 classed as laborers rose. Whether the result of economic hardship or something worse - trafficking or exploitation, these children's situation will have a lasting impact on their health, happiness and well-being.
Making progress in Honduras
Meghan St. John is working as an intern in the Volunteers & Community Partnerships department at the U.S. Fund for UNICEF. This is her first blog post for Fieldnotes.
I just returned from my third visit to La Ceiba, Honduras, where I spent time at the Children of the Light, a small organization that provides education, care and safety to the homeless children of Honduras.
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| © Meghan St. John |
| Meghan playing with Josue and other Children of the Light in Honduras. |
While there I spent time with the 23 boys playing endless games of soccer, helping with their homework and slowly tackling the language barrier to learn about each other's lives. When not spending time with the kids, I helped decorate the organization's school library to "bring it to life," updated the organization's blog and further developed their sponsorship program.
Many of the boys at the project, whose ages range from 5 to 22, had previously been abused, abandoned and left homeless on the streets. Others had been exposed to drugs, gangs and crime. One of the older boys admitted that before coming to the Children of the Light, he did "very bad things." In fact, on my first day back in La Ceiba, the children and I witnessed first-hand an aggressive fight between a group of Honduran men that involved gunfire and a machete. Bullets were flying right over some of the children who were ducked down in the back of truck just feet away from the violence.
This is the life of violence and crime that smaller nonprofits like Children of the Light, and larger humanitarian organizations such as UNICEF, prevent children and teens from living.
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Welcome to Fieldnotes. Blogging gives us the ability to quickly report from the field, alert you to media coverage of interest, and share the success of UNICEF's lifesaving work around the globe.
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