Question

With reference to UNICEF, answer the following questions:

1. What was the purpose of setting up of UNICEF?
2. Briefly mention the functions of UNICEF.
3. Mention some of the UNICEF programmes followed in India.

Answer 1

1. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) was founded in 1946 to address the emergency needs of children in postwar Europe and China. Thus, it helped countries that were unable to meet their children's requirements with their own resources. Later, it expanded its work to improve the quality of life for children and women in poor countries.
2. UNICEF's primary functions include:
   1. protecting children's survival, health, and well-being.
   2. It sponsors the training of individuals such as health and sanitation workers, teachers, and nutritionists. One of UNICEF's primary goals was universal child immunisation against avoidable diseases.
   3. It offers technical supplies, equipment, and other aids, such as textbook paper, health clinic equipment and medications, and pipes and pumps for supplying clean water to villages.
   4. It helps governments plan, develop, and expand community-based services such as maternity and child health, nutrition, clean water, and sanitation.
   5. It assists children and mothers during emergencies caused by natural disasters, civil unrest, and epidemics.
   6. It strives to avoid diseases such as tuberculosis (TB), malaria, eye ailments, skin diseases, and others.
   7. UNICEF conducts a variety of additional tasks. As the sole agency representing children, it speaks on their behalf, protects the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and works to ensure its implementation.
3. The key programmes launched with the aid and assistance of UNICEF in India include the following:
   1. The Indian government, in partnership with UNICEF, has launched the National Mission on Immunisation, the National Mission for Drinking Water, and the National Literacy Mission.
   2. With UNICEF assistance, a Community Development Programme for maternal and child health has been launched in India's rural districts.
   3. UNICEF supports the government's efforts to minimise baby and child mortality from diarrhoeal illnesses through the production of Oral Rehydration Therapy (ORT).
   4. UNICEF collaborates with the Indian government on the Accelerated Rural Water Supply Programme.
   5. Since the 1990s, the Indian government, UNICEF, and other UN agencies have collaborated to promote iodised salt as the most effective means of avoiding iodine deficient illnesses.
   6. UNICEF aspires to enhance the rights of all women and children in India to survival, development, participation, and protection by addressing societal inequities based on gender, caste, ethnicity, or geography.