Anthony Lake, the new executive director of UNICEF, fears many of the world's children can disappear in a haze of statistics, making progress on paper while neglect, abuse or impoverishment go undetected.
As the Obama's administration's new choice to head the United Nations Children's Fund, Lake, whose full name is William Anthony Kirsopp Lake wants to make what he calls "equity" his top priority -- analyzing disparities among the world's children. While national -- or even world statistics -- can show an improvement in the care of children or maternal mortality, pockets of poverty within a nation or within a community often tell a different story.
"We are working very hard now on reviewing our programs throughout the organization to see if we can refocus with a greater priority on getting into the toughest neighborhoods in the cities and the farthest communities to try to reduce those disparities," Lake said in an interview, his first since taking office in May.
In measuring child mortality, Lake said as an example of "equity" issues, you get different answers depending on the analysis. He pulled out maps of Brazil, a middle-income country, which he said could be maps for any country in Africa or in south Asia. If you look at the country's average mortality for children under 5 years old, Brazil has a low rate -- fewer than 17 per 1,000 live births. If the map is broken down by pockets of deprivation, the death rate would be double.
"If we focus on averaging alone, we could easily miss all the work that needs to be done and result in an 'easy win' rather than finding the forgotten children," Lake said. "I am convinced that this is not only the right thing in moral terms but also the right thing in practical terms."
Evelyn Leopold
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/evelyn-leopold/unicef-looking-for-pocket_b_684286.html
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