Report on NGOCU, November 10, 2011

by Uraidah Hassani

The meeting of the NGO* Committee on UNICEF (NGOCU) that I attended on November 10, 2011, was the first membership meeting in over a year. The two-hour meeting focused on updating the NGO members on the revision of the NGOCU mandate and on promoting UNICEF’s Equity-Based Approach to development.

The revision of the NGOCU mandate was necessary for two reasons: efficiency and impact. The NGO Committee on UNICEF began in 1952 in order to mobilize NGOs to support the work of UNICEF. However, at many moments throughout NGOCU’s history, NGOCU has been faced with a broad, un-focused mandate and competing priorities which it lacked the capacity to fulfill. There was an overall lack of information on UNICEF for the NGO Committee and many of the working groups were inactive. The NGOCU transition team found that in order to make the largest contribution to development, the NGOCU needed to focus on advocacy in partnership with UNICEF.

The new mandate focuses the intention of the NGOCU so that child rights advocacy, regional collaboration and an equity framework are the focal points. UNICEF has demonstrated its support for the revision of NGOCU by giving the NGO Committee a grant of $19,500, from which $2,000 is dedicated to workshops. The new structure of the NGOCU consists of a management team, advisory group of specialists and working groups. NGOCU is launching a new website in the coming months that will facilitate engagement with membership organizations of NGOCU by allowing updates from member organizations on the site, and developing a membership database. A UNICEF representative present at the meeting today emphasized that NGOCU’s most significant tool to influence UNICEF’s work is access to UNICEF executive board meetings. For this reason, the next NGOCU meeting will be held around the UNICEF executive board meeting, which is scheduled for February 7 – 10, 2012.

The most interesting aspect of this meeting was the discussion of UNICEF’s Equity-Based Approach given by David Anthony of UNICEF. As a result of the vast global economic growth experienced in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, many were lifted out of poverty, at least statistically. However, this growth also left behind escalating inequality. The economic turmoil in Europe at the moment is especially frightening as it signals for the development world that there will be even less aid in the future. For this reason, Mr. Anthony explains, UNICEF must be judicious and give priority to the most needy, disadvantaged and vulnerable children. Recent UNICEF studies have found that it is not the country or region that children live that determines mortality rates, but rather where they live with in a country.

If we direct our efforts towards the most disadvantaged, marginalized children, we can have a significant effect on child survival and development, while remaining practical and cost-effective. The Equity-Based Approach focuses on overcoming the impediments to reaching the most marginalized children, which is often geographic distance to resources. Anthony Lake, the new Executive Director of UNICEF, challenges us to be more cost-effective: “We can get more if we have more [financially], but can we get more with what we have?” UNICEF urges all the members of the NGO Committee on UNICEF to use the Equity-Based Approach across the board. While the equity-focused approach has only been used as a way of meeting the health Millennium Development Goals for children, Mr. Anthony and UNICEF suggest that it can and should be translated into other fields such as education, disability etcetera. The meeting did not go in depth about the approach, but I think it may be worth looking into for Susila Dharma International. [A UNICEF study on the Equity-Based Approach: http://www.unicef.org/publications/index_55927.html].

Thank you for reading!

Uraidah Hassani
SDIA Representative to the United Nations

*NGO stands for Non-Governmental Organization.