 |
|
|
|
 |
 |
Home / Employment / Contact / Search / Français / Español        |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
||||||||||
|
Press CentreBriefing note29 March 2003: What UNICEF seeks in the UN appealThomas McDermott, UNICEF Regional Director Middle East / North Africa
Good morning and thank you for coming today. As you know, all of the agencies represented at this table have been preparing for months for actions we would take in the event of a war. Like everyone, we hoped desperately that the war would not come, but knew that as agencies we had to be prepared, in case it did. All of us are now in desperate need of funds, if we are to do our jobs properly in the months ahead. In UNICEF's case we are appealing today for a total of $166 million to cover the next six months. We have focused our attention on five key sectors: * Water Suppply and Sanitation - where we are asking for $55 million. We plan to support emergency water tankering in cities such as Basra, emergency repairs of urban water systems and provision of backup systems in water plants. aid to keep urban sewerage systems running, and hygiene education. Our main partners are ICRC and CARE, and in case of refugee camps outside Iraq, UNHCR. * Education - where we ask for $19 million. This is a sector often forgotten in emergency work, but clearly vital in Iraq - a country where one out of every four school age children is not in school. Our main partners are UNESCO and the Norwegian Refugee Council and UNHCR. UNICEF plans to focus on areas such as school equipment, provision of learning materials, teacher retraining, and physical rehabilitation of schools. While UNICEF focusses on primary schools, UNESCO plans to focus on secondary schools and on work of the central Ministry of Education. One important facet of UNESCO's appeal is support to training of teachers in trauma alleviation - an activity closely tied to UNICEF's own work for trauma counselling. Another important area for UNESCO is their plan to support programmes for adolescents - again vital because so many young people have not been in school. * Health - where we ask for $27 million. We work in this sector in close partnership with WHO and UNFPA. UNICEF will focus on immunization, provision of essential drugs, heatlh education, and obstetric care. WHO will play an important role in restoring he national public health system, the hospitals, and the central Ministry. UNFPA has taken an important role in support of safe deliveries, addressing also difficult issues like sexually transmitted diseases, and sexual violence. * Nutrition - where we ask for $44 million. Here our partners are WFP, FAO and WHO. UNICEF focusses on continued functioning of Iraq's extensive system of supplementary and therapeutic feeding centres which serve children classed as chronically or severely malnourished. We in addition plan to support nutrition education and particularly the promotion of breastfeeding. * Child protection - where we ask for $12 million - Here we plan to address the problems of children in institutions. We plan a major programme in trauma counselling of children. We also plan to work with ICRC, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, IOM and UNHCR in the promotion of a protection mechanisms for all non-combattants, and a particular effort aimed at tracing and re-unification of separated children with their families. We also plan to work with UNMAS in mine awareness education. All of these programmes are vital for Iraq's future, for its children. We ask everyone's help in seeing that we can get them going as quickly as possible. Thank you. ###
For further information please contact us:. Geoffrey Keele, UNICEF Iraq:
gkeele@unicef.org For interviews in the region, write or call directly to the UNICEF NewsDesk in Amman: (962-79) 50422058 •
Broadcasters! |
||||||||||||
 |