UN: The annual report of the United Nations children's organisation, Unicef, highlighting the plight of millions of underprivileged children around the world was overshadowed yesterday by a savage attack on the organisation.
Unicef had "lost its way" and was focused too heavily on the "rights" of children rather than their survival, according to Dr Richard Horton, the editor of the British medical journal, the Lancet. In the current edition, he blames the organisation's executive director, Ms Carol Bellamy, and its political affiliation with the United States.
"Unicef clearly has a pivotal role to lead the world's efforts to make children a global priority. Under Bellamy's leadership, Unicef is presently in a poor position to do so," Dr Horton writes.
"Her distinctive focus has been to advocate for the rights of children. This rights-based approach to the future of children fits well with the Zeitgeist of international development policy. But a preoccupation with rights ignores the fact that children will have no opportunity for development at all unless they survive.
"The language of rights means little to a child stillborn, an infant dying in pain from pneumonia, or a child desiccated by famine. The most fundamental right of all is the right to survive. Child survival must sit at the core of Unicef's advocacy and country work. Currently, and shamefully, it does not."
It was widely, if regrettably, accepted that Unicef had lost its way during Ms Bellamy's long term of office, said Dr Horton. With a background as a corporate lawyer, financier and New York politician, she was ill equipped for her role at Unicef, he alleged.
He added: "While Bellamy has focused on girls' education, early childhood development, immunisation, HIV/Aids and protecting children from violence, abuse, exploitation and discrimination, she has failed to address the essential health needs of children."
He strongly criticises the way the selection of Unicef's executive director lay in the gift of the UN Secretary-General, currently Kofi Annan.
Dr Horton writes: "This mysterious procedure leaves open the possibility of crude political deal-making in identifying an acceptable candidate - acceptable, many observers suspect, to the UN's largest funder, the US government.
"This discredited process threatens to damage the integrity of the UN system and, more importantly, it may well prove disastrous for the future of child health." He points out that all four executive directors appointed so far had been Americans.
Sources close to Mr Annan indicated that Ms Bellamy's successor would also be from the US, irrespective of skills and experience.
According to Unicef's annual report, more than a billion children are being denied the rights contained in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, agreed by world leaders in 1989. Researchers found that one in 21 (90 million) children were severely hungry, one in seven (270 million) had no healthcare at all and children accounted for nearly half of the 3.6 million people killed in war since 1990.
Unicef was created in December 1946 in the aftermath of the second World War. The agency was needed because of the threats posed to children in Europe from disease and famine. In subsequent years Unicef became increasingly devoted to promoting the overall well-being and health of children.