75 years of UNICEF
then and now
The two photos above were taken almost 75 years apart. The world has changed a lot in that time, but some things are still the same. In emergencies, children are still the ones who suffer the most. Like the two girls in the picture above: the displaced toddler in Germany in 1946 and the Ethiopian refugee girl in a camp in Sudan in late 2020.
The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) was established on December 11, 1946, with the aim of helping girls and boys in need. The idea behind it was to help starving and sick children in devastated Europe after the Second World War. This aid was intended to benefit all children, regardless of the role their home country had played in the war. The declaration establishing the Fund states: “The hope of the world rests in the coming generations.” The world has changed dramatically over the intervening years, but UNICEF’s mission is every bit as urgent today as it was then.
Education for every child
Education became a focus of UNICEF’s work as early as 1961. After all, education holds the key to a child’s personal development, as well as being a catalyst for social mobility, equal opportunities and economic development within entire countries. Before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, one in five children of pre-school to secondary school age had no access to education. At the same time, more than half of the world’s schoolchildren could not read or write properly by the end of primary school. The pandemic has further exacerbated this situation.
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To address this global learning crisis, UNICEF is committed to equal access to education for all, improved learning and teaching methods and safe learning in crisis situations and other fragile contexts. In 144 countries around the world, UNICEF runs programs to give children and young people the knowledge and skills they need to develop successfully.
Support us in our efforts to give every child in this world the chance of a fair future.