The United Nations was honoured in 1965—for the fourth time—when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) for playing a vital role in fostering "the brotherhood among nations and the furtherance of peace". This award was a recognition of the vital role UNICEF has carved for itself in the pursuit of basic human needs and rights of all children. An entity dealing initially with a "minor, peripheral problem"—it was created on a temporary basis to deal with the emergency needs and post-war crises facing Europe's many helpless children—UNICEF has evolved into the world's "never slumbering conscience".
Recognizing that the children of today are the arbiters of tomorrow's peace, the award underscores the importance of cooperation among Governments, the United Nations and international and non-governmental organizations in striving to improve the condition of children.
UNICEF Executive Director Henry R. Labouisse, in his acceptance speech on behalf of the agency, stressed the need for providing universal education to children. Creating trained and informed minds, liberated from old prejudices and hatreds, would result in an adult population that could trust its own civilization and one another, he said. "The longer the world tolerates the slow war of attrition, which poverty and ignorance now wage against 800 million children in the developing countries, the more likely it becomes that our hope for lasting peace will be the ultimate casualty."
A global institution focusing on a long-range benefit approach to the health, literacy and rights issues of children in developing countries, UNICEF has managed to successfully establish the link between children's aid and national development, portraying the child as "a future agent for economic and social change". Thus, the fight against disease, hunger, ignorance and poverty that dogs the steps of the young in struggling economies today has become a development goal of tomorrow.
In December 1953, the UN General Assembly directed UNICEF to strengthen the permanent child health and welfare programmes of countries receiving assistance, through the provision of supplies, training and advice, turning the agency into a permanent organ of the United Nations. The Declaration of the Rights of the Child, focusing on children's rights, maternal protection, health, adequate food, shelter and education, was adopted by the General Assembly in 1959; it is an important milestone in the commitment of world Governments to focus on the needs of children—an issue once considered peripheral to development.
The Fund works closely with local governments, ensuring that mutual cooperation results in successful implementation of their common goals. This coordination is reflected and reinforced by the matching rule that calls for Governments to match, dollar for dollar, what UNICEF spends in children's projects in their countries. There is also a close inter-agency collaboration between UNICEF and the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the International Labour Organization.
Advocating the protection of children's rights, the UNICEF mission is to ensure that the health, protection and development of children are recognized by the international community as universal development imperatives integral to human progress. In particular, the Fund focuses on disadvantaged children—victims of war and other kinds of violence, disasters and extreme poverty, as well as those with disabilities. Promotion of girls' education is a priority, as is prevention of diseases, especially HIV/AIDS.
"UNICEF aid comes marvellously alive in the field when you see ... a whole pilot region raising its standards simultaneously in education, nutrition, sanitation and health, with everyone lending a hand, from the local teachers and doctors to the poorest families of the jungle villages", said Mr. Labouisse, citing the odds confronting the average child in over a hundred developing countries: 4 to 1 against receiving any medical attention; 2 to 1 against receiving any education at all; and 4 to 1 against completing elementary education. "He will have to work for a living by the time he is twelve. He will work to eat—to eat badly and not enough. And his life will end in about forty years."
The UNICEF resolve is to change these odds—forever. Engaged in advocacy and mobilization of political will and material resources to help meet children's basic needs, it strives to improve their lives and expand their future opportunities, especially of those living in the shadow of disease, hunger, ignorance and poverty. The Nobel Peace Prize to UNICEF was an acknowledgement by the international community of the essential link between healthy, educated, well-cared children and future world peace.
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