People's Health Movement: Defend UNICEF's Mission to Defend Children!
The
People's Health Movement and its members work with UNICEF, the World
Health Organization and other United Nations' agencies. Our members and
constituent organizations were so alarmed to hear of the appointment of
Ms. Ann Veneman as the next Executive Director of UNICEF that we have
written and are distributing this Letter of Concern calling for a
rethinking of both the appointment and the appointment process. If you
or your organization would like to sign onto the letter, please click HERE
For more information about this
letter and process, contact: phm@hesperian.org
and go to www.saveunicef.org A letter of concern from the People's Health Movement regarding the appointment of Ms. Ann Veneman as Executive
Letter of concern
Director of UNICEF, effective May 2005.
To the honorable Secretary General of the United Nations Mr. Kofi Annan and the members of the Executive Board of the
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF):
The
People's Health Movement (PHM) was alarmed to learn of the appointment
of Ms. Ann Veneman, former Secretary of the United States Department of
Agriculture (USDA), as the new Executive Director of UNICEF. It is
unfortunate that the process of appointing an Executive Director for
UNICEF is shrouded in secrecy, and allows no mechanism for individuals
or NGOs active around issues of children's welfare, health and rights
to participate. Neither is there a forum for the various candidates to
make known their goals or plans for the agency prior to the
announcement of the appointment.(1)
Apparently the appointment
process allows the
government the lion's share of decision-making in the choice of
Executive Director of UNICEF. This in itself should be a cause for
debate among all observers. As is well-known, the
are the only two countries which have refused to join the 189 other
governments of the world as signatories of the UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child. Given the
practice of de-funding UN agencies whose direction it disapproves
(UNESCO, UNFPA, WHO, etc.), we can only imagine the pressures brought
to bear on the Secretary General to name Ms. Veneman.
In
the absence of a transparent, informative process to select an
Executive Director, the international health community is forced to
evaluate Ms. Veneman's suitability to lead UNICEF based on her past
performance on issues affecting children's health. After reviewing the
publicly available information, the People's Health Movement believes
it would be unconscionable to quietly stand by while Ms. Veneman is
appointed steward of the health and well-being of the most vulnerable
among us: children.
Ms.
Veneman's training and experience as a corporate lawyer for
agribusiness do not qualify her for the substantial task of leading the
agency most responsible for the rights of children worldwide. There is
no evidence in her tenure as
Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of the
Department of Food and Agriculture, or Deputy Undersecretary for
International Affairs of the USDA of her interest in the world's
children or their health and well-being. Indeed, her performance in
these positions has been characterized by the elevation of corporate
profit above people's right to food (UN Declaration of Human Rights,
article 25). Such a philosophy and practice would reverse almost six
decades of UNICEF's proud humanitarian history and prove disastrous for
the world's children.
One of the greatest disasters
for children of the past decade has been the
and the subsequent invasion and occupation of that country. The
previous Director of UNICEF, Ms. Bellamy, called for an end to the
sanctions responsible for the deaths of an estimated 500,000 children.
Ms. Veneman has made no similar expressions of concern. Indeed, as
Secretary of Agriculture, in 2003 she named Mr. Daniel Amstutz to head
director Kevin Watkins stated, "Putting Dan Amstutz in charge of agricultural reconstruction in
is like putting Saddam Hussein in the chair of a human rights
commission. This guy is uniquely well placed to advance the commercial
interests of American grain companies and bust open the Iraqi market,
but singularly ill equipped to lead a reconstruction effort in a
developing country."(2) This appointment by Ms. Veneman doesn't bode
well for the children of
nor does it evidence concern for them on the part of the next Executive Director of UNICEF.
As
one of the negotiators of the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), Ms. Veneman helped write the rules that have plunged millions
of Mexican children into poverty. NAFTA codified the harsh neoliberal
economic policies that have swept away laws and protections won by
Mexican workers over decades. The US-Mexico border is characterized by
harsh and worsening conditions of child labor in the Mexicali Valley,
deplorable housing around factories, increased environmental
contamination, and a lack of educational, health and sanitary
infrastructure for workers and their families, especially young
children.(3)
Ms. Veneman's attitude toward children who work spans the border to include the fields and orchards of her own
country. When Human Rights Watch sought her support for pending amendments to
US
legislation (Fair Labor Standards Act and others), then-US Secretary of
Agriculture Veneman spurned their concerns. Apparently, the future
Executive Director of UNICEF was not moved by the health
and safety risks to child farm workers, including routine pesticide
exposures, inadequate access to sanitation and drinking water,
hazardous conditions causing work-related illnesses and injuries, low
wages and long hours, the effects of farm work on education, and
special risks to girls, including sexual harassment.(4)
Ms.
Veneman's record in respecting the rights of ethnic minorities in the
States
is also poor. When African American farmers won a judgment against the
US Department of Agriculture for unfair treatment in the provision of
subsidies and loans, more than US$12 million was spent by the USDA to
undermine this historic civil rights case. Under Ms. Veneman's
leadership, the USDA paid out less than 25% of the funds set aside for
the Black farmers. The USDA has never accepted that its policies were
racist, has never apologized, and continues to fight the farmers.
Racist policies should not be tolerated in any government, and could
wreak havoc in an international setting like the United Nations.(5)
Policies
championed by Ms. Veneman around protecting public health, especially
in regard to the "mad cow disease" (bovine spongiform encephalopathy)
outbreak, have been weak. Instead of pursuing an approach prioritizing
health based on the precautionary principle, USDA activity centered on
minimizing financial losses to the cattle raising and meat packing
industries. Ms. Veneman assured the population that there was no
problem with beef when only very limited testing was carried out, and
resisted labeling meat to identify country of origin. In fact, the USDA
refused to permit meatpackers to test cows in order to meet high
international export standards, afraid that US consumers would also
demand stricter guarantees of protection.(6) Given another of the
USDA's roles --as a large purchaser of beef for school lunch programs--
this antipathy to verifying the integrity of the nation's beef supply
evidences replacing concern for the health of children with concern for
the health of beef industry profits.
Perhaps
Ms. Veneman's most noteworthy support of agribusiness over people's
health concerns is her unequivocal support for genetically modified
foods and the biotechnology industry. Despite all evidence to the
contrary, Ms. Veneman declared at an UN FAO conference that
biotechnology "will reinvigorate productivity growth in food and
agriculture production and make agriculture more environmentally
sustainable." Formerly a corporate director of Calgene, producer of the
first commercially marketed GMO tomato, Ms. Veneman continued the US
Department of Agriculture's policy of approving field releases of GMOs
at almost 40,000 sites between 1987 and 2002, rejecting only 3.5 % of
applications. Her handling of the two GMO "crises" occurring during her
tenure (those of Starlink and ProdiGene corn) resulted in US$20 million
and US$3.5 million payouts respectively to the corporate sector, but in
no labeling requirements or protections for consumers. In a move that
foreshadows an opposition to a diversity of stakeholder viewpoints in
UNICEF, the Advisory Committee on Biotechnology, named by Ms. Veneman
in 2003, purposefully excluded key anti-biotech farmers' organizations.
Ms. Veneman's comments pressuring the European Union to drop its ban on
GM food imports and calling African countries "disgraceful" for
refusing non-processed GM food donations have been widely reported.
Such comments display an inability to recognize the validity of
cultural concerns, which is a central qualification for delicate
international posts like the direction of UNICEF.(7)
When the US Department of
Agriculture was founded in the mid-19th
century, President Abraham Lincoln called it the "People's Department"
because it served the approximately one half of the population engaged
in agricultural work. 150 years later, a small fraction of Americans
are engaged in farm work and the USDA mostly represents corporate
interests. The Veneman period in that US government agency has served
only to intensify corporate control.(8) In an agency like UNICEF, where
its constituency of children has a limited ability to represent
themselves, it is urgent that those charged to speak for children and
represent their interests have a history that qualifies them to do so.
We
do not wish to unfairly assert that Ms. Veneman's future in UNICEF can
be known by simply reviewing her history in agriculture. However, in
one of her only reported post- nomination comments regarding her new
post, Ms. Veneman asserted in a press conference that reproductive
health and education were "not relevant to the missions of UNICEF."(9)
As all experienced in child health and welfare know, a mother's access
to reproductive health and education including child spacing are in
fact central determinants of child health. This inauspicious
introduction to a new administration at UNICEF raises alarm bells for
those dedicated to child welfare.
In
the coming period, UNICEF will be facing challenges in a number of
areas which demand strong advocacy for children and their rights. There
are enormous differences between an approach that seeks to maximize
corporate profit and one that maximizes child health and well-being
regarding:
* children's rights
to food, housing, education, healthcare and childhood itself;
* the marketing of breastmilk
substitutes;
* women's access to
reproductive health and child spacing information and services;
* access to ARVs and other
pharmaceuticals for HIV+ children and their families;
* the provision of untested
and insufficiently tested GMO foods, supplements and
medicines to children;
* the effects of neoliberal
"free" trade policies on families and childhood;
* water privatization and
access, and diarrheal disease;
* industrial contamination,
and birth defects and disabilities;
and many others.
In
a world where 11 million children under the age of 5 die each year,
most from a lack of simple medicines, clean water, safe environments,
and adequate nutrition, advocacy for children means demanding corporate
and government accountability and dedication to resolve those problems.
In a world in which health experts estimate that 6 million of those
children could be saved by low-tech interventions costing about $7.5
billion (less than 2 percent of the annual US military budget),
advocacy for children means opposing the harmful and wasteful expansion
of military spending and the use of military force to solve problems.
As
advocates for children, we are compelled to voice our strong concerns
about the appointment of Ms. Ann Veneman as Executive Director of
UNICEF. The People's Health Movement and NGOs with a long history of
promotion of child welfare and children's rights will not permit the
integrity of the most respected international body devoted to the
welfare of the world's children to be jeopardized. While we look
forward to a close and productive engagement with the new leadership of
UNICEF, and continued collaboration with the dedicated staff of local
UNICEF offices, we will not hesitate to actively oppose the
implementation of policies that do not work to eliminate the 30,000
daily preventable child deaths and other threats to child welfare.
As
advocates for children, we also insist that the Secretary General
replace current practice, which rewards powerful countries with the
ability to make political appointments to important posts, with a
transparent and participatory process that guarantees a professional,
committed and competent leadership for UNICEF and other agencies. The
present process undermines democracy, sullies the image of the UN, and
further threatens the already precarious existence of the majority of
the world's citizens.
Signed:
Ravi Narayan, Coordinator,
Global Secretariat, People's Health Movement (PHM)
( List of Signers )
Fran Baum PHM Pacific, Australia
and New Zealand
B. Ekbal, PHM India
Edelina De La Paz,
PHM South East Asia
Jihad Mashaal, PHM Middle
East
Arturo Qizhpe, PHM South
America
David Saunders, PHM Southern
Africa
Sarah Shannon and Lanny Smith,
PHM North America
Pam Zinkin, PHM Europe
Prem John, Asian Community
Health Action Network (ACHAN)
Zafrullah Chowdhury, Gonoshasthaya
Kendra (GK)
Maria Hamlin Zuniga, International
People's Health Council (IPHC)
Nadia Van der Linde, Women's
Global Network for Reproductive Rights, WGNRR
Claudio Schuftan
Footnotes:
1. Richard Horton, "UNICEF
Leadership 2005-2015: A Call for Strategic Change," The Lancet, December 4, 2004.
2. Bill
Berkowitz, "Iraq's Agriculture Czar," Z Magazine, September 2003,
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Sept2003/berkowitz0903.html .
3. David Bacon, The Children of NAFTA: Labor
Wars on the U.S./ Mexico Border, 2004, University of California Press.
4.
Letter from Lois Whitman, Children's Rights Division, Human Rights
Watch, to Ann M. Veneman, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, February 8,
2001, http://hrw.org/campaigns/crp/farmchild/veneman_letter.htm .
5. Environmental Working Group, Obstruction
of Justice: USDA Undermines Historic Civil Rights Settlement with Black Farmers, 20 July 2004, http://www.ewg.org/reports/blackfarmers .
6.
Philip Mattera, USDA Inc: How Agribusiness has Hijacked Regulatory Policy at the US
Department of Agriculture, Corporate Research Project of Good Jobs First, July 23, 2004, http://www.agribusinessaccountability.org/pdfs//289_USDA%20Inc..pdf .
7. Mattera, USDA, Inc.
8. Matera, USDA, Inc.
9.
"Nominee Says Reproductive Health Not Relevant to UNICEF Mission,"
1/21/2005, http://cebo.org/2005_01_01_unnews_archive.html .
- 116 Human Rights