UNICEF at 75 - our Next 25 Years About our Cover Children have traveled a long way since 1946.  We in UNICEF were privileged to walk some of that distance with them and occasionally to smoothen their path.  They still have a long path to travel ahead, but they walk with confidence. Let us share their journey with hope and confidence for these coming 25 years.  We thank Meg Loeks Photography and its Click Community for the background photo used in our cover.  About this edition of the Quarterly This is the last of our quarterlies celebrating UNICEF@75. This edition assembles 18 articles that attempt to foretell the issues of children 25 years from now. Perhaps the covid  pandemic and the challenges posed by COP26 raised more fears than hopes for a better tomorrow.  Some contributors anticipate a rather gloomy future for children, but there are also those expressing hope and opportunities, also driven by growing youth movements. For our last article in ...

No Gloom and Doom by Detlef Palm  The world has become a better place, historically speaking. I am not going to join the doomers. It took me quite some effort, but I will not give in to despair. It is in the DNA of the UNICEF profession to see the glass half empty. Because we need a task that gives meaning to our existence. But there will be no apocalypse. The current temporary pandemic aside, this is the greatest time in history to be alive. Two hundred years ago, 85 percent of the world population lived in extreme poverty. Today only 9 percent live in extreme poverty. The average life expectancy around the world has doubled in the same period, to 72. The biggest progress was made in child survival. To correct your misconceptions about the state of world affairs, check upgrade your worldview on Hans Rösling’s Gapminder . Bad news, catastrophes, terrorist attacks, wars and famines tend to make a headline, good news are just statistics. Rest assured: I am neither in denial, nor d...

The Brome Lake Duck and Drake Weekly by Fouad Kronfol Special Issue for the Holidays.!!!! "Kaboom, Kaboom, Kaboom ! There is absolutely no room, In this world of darkness and gloom, To think about human doom, When our spirits start to loom, And there goes another Zoom!" It is 5 December 2041 and I am sitting by the Lake musing about the World and UNICEF. These are some thoughts as they came to my mind:........ In a few days UNICEF will be 95 years old and probably on the verge of having a new Executive Director (ED) appointed . What will happen when she/he comes on board? The world has fallen into ruins in the past 20 years or so...the Covid pandemic wreaked havoc with health services in all the world, but hit hardest the developing countries. While some of the rich nations managed to protect a large number of their citizens, the poorer ones were left to fend for themselves. But, now there are close to one thousand countries, 997 to be exact, since almost ...

A Future for Our Children's Children - The Challenges Ahead by Tom McDermott A wanderer is man from his birth. He was born in a ship On the breast of the river of Time; …. Haply, the river of Time— As it grows,  .... May acquire, if not the calm Of its early mountainous shore, Yet a solemn peace of its own. Matthew Arnold, ‘The Future’ The future does not exist - at least not yet Thinking about, let alone writing, about the future is not easy. The hard fact of age is that for many of us the coming 25 years are merely the leading edge of a future many of us will not see. It is instead a future for our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Only through their ‘present’ does it become our future. Telling the story of our pasts is easier - we can remember - or pretend to remember, each in our own ways - real people, places and events, and weave them into the stories we tell of why we are who we are. The story of our future, on the other hand, is a much harder story to tel...

What the World Needs Now? - The Issues My Generation Will Combat Over the Next 25 Years By Kamala Gururaja In the last 25 years, our society has developed and progressed in innumerable ways. 25 years ago, in 1996, Fox News launched, Bill Clinton was reelected as President of the United States, Garry Kasparov played his first chess match against the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue, and Prince Charles and Princess Diana divorced. In 2021, we are living through the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, are in an age of disinformation and polarization, live in a society based on technology and the internet, and are facing the serious effects of climate change. Who would have imagined that the world would be like this in 1996? For me, a high schooler who was born in 2007 (the year the iPhone was invented), this is the only world that I know. While my generation did not create the challenges that this world faces, it is up to us to solve these issues. Twenty five years ago, President Bill Cl...

The Horror Show Continues  by Ramesh Shrestha Towards the beginning of the fourth decade of 21st century the United Nations will have some 210 member states as a result of fragmentation of several multi-ethnic countries. Many children in most countries will be able to speak multiple unrelated languages. Children born between 2021 and 2025 would be in their prime age of youth in 2046. They will be among the 9.5 billion people inhabiting the planet Earth. As the global population growth is slowing, the number of children in 2046 will be proportionately small but in absolute terms the number will still be higher compared to the early 21stcentury. They will be largely concentrated in Africa, Middle East and Asia. Here is a typical client of UNICEF in 2046. Considering the positive secular trend in cognitive development, children and youth in 2046 would be a lot smarter than the children born during the early 21st century. Their cognitive skills will be much better than at any time in h...

Education and UNICEF in 25 years’ time by Jim Ackers  It’s very difficult to even imagine what education and UNICEF will look like in 25 years given the pace and unpredictability of change over the last 25. Existential threats like climate change, armed conflict, and global pandemics are huge challenges to be addressed. Reductions in demographic growth also offer new challenges, but also optimism that low income countries will not have to continue to divide fewer resources between more children. Development partners seldom acknowledge how pitifully small expenditure per capita on education is in low income countries: $48 per child compared to $8,501 in high income countries. More investment is needed if all children are to achieve minimum learning. Another increasing threat to the future of humanity is the denial of scientific evidence. This is a huge challenge going forward as misinformation and disinformation are so prevalent and have dangerously polarized public opinion aro...

Confronting Trauma By Rolf Carriere Psychological trauma insidiously interferes with the lives of countless millions—children and adults. Traumas are due to various types of violence, as shown in the Trauma Tree. Traumas invisibly inflict immense suffering and undermine health, development, and peace. If not treated, trauma may last a lifetime. And for many it does. But trauma needs no longer be the life sentence it was throughout most of history. Today effective, scalable treatments exist. Morality, enlightened self-interest, and the duty of care all compel us to make them widely available. Psychological trauma has devastating consequences on individuals, families, and whole communities. It ruins health, inhibits creativity, weakens productivity, harms educability and hampers well-being. It drives violence and that way it limits the space for peace. ‘Hurt people hurt people’, because unresolved trauma may produce anger, fantasies of revenge and lingering resentment that, at any time,...