Remarks by UNICEF Executive Director Catherine M. Russell at the opening of the UNICEF Executive Board
02/08/2022
As prepared for delivery
…I want to begin by thanking Secretary General Guterres and all the members of the Executive Board for the opportunity to lead this extraordinary organization.

Children are the world’s most precious resource.  There is no greater cause than championing their rights and wellbeing.  I am committed to this cause with all my heart, and I am proud to join the UNICEF family.

I would like to acknowledge and thank my predecessor, Henrietta Fore, for her leadership of UNICEF over the last four years — especially for skillfully guiding UNICEF’s global response to the COVID- pandemic, and for engaging every sector to support the world’s most vulnerable children.

For 75 years, UNICEF has stood for a powerful truth: Every child has the right to grow up healthy and strong.  To be nurtured and protected.  To be educated and prepared to contribute to their societies.  And for 75 years, UNICEF and our partners have worked to help children realize those rights, wherever they are…

…All these threats to children are harmful enough on their own.  COVID-19 has exponentially increased their impact.

From the very first weeks and months of the pandemic, UNICEF has been responding to the direct risks COVID-19 posed to children and families.  Through COVAX, we are helping lead the largest vaccine procurement and supply operation in history, using our unique expertise as the world’s biggest vaccine buyer and our on-the-ground delivery capacity.

We continue to focus our efforts on expanding vaccine access for communities in low- and middle-income countries — and reaching those hardest to reach.  It is unconscionable that in the world’s poorest countries, fewer than 10 percent of people have received at least one dose of vaccine.
UNICEF is working with our partners to change this, including by procuring and delivering COVID-19 vaccines to African Union Member States, on behalf of the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust.

We still have a long way to go to turn vaccines into vaccinations — and to reach every arm.  To achieve vaccine equity, we need more partners to join us, and we must have a fully coordinated global effort.  That is why we are requesting your endorsement for the establishment of a new senior position to support COVID-19 vaccine country-readiness and delivery.  This role will coordinate interagency efforts to forecast vaccine needs, as well as provide financial and technical assistance to overcome bottlenecks.

We will continue working to make progress on vaccine distribution and access.  But the last two years have shown us that it is not enough to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.  We also need to mitigate the pandemic’s impact on children.

The numbers are staggering. We estimate that 100 million more children are now living in poverty because of the pandemic — a 10 per cent increase since 2019.  Increasing poverty could push an additional 9 million children into child labor by the end of this year. More than 616 million children are still affected by full or partial school closures, something I will say more about in a moment.

In 2020 alone, an additional 23 million children didn’t receive essential vaccinations that protect their lives and their healthy development. 

An additional 9 million children are at risk of wasting, the deadliest form of malnutrition — many of them caught in humanitarian crises without access to treatment. UNICEF estimates that an additional 10 million girls are at risk for child marriage, and there is mounting evidence of increases in gender-based violence and sexual abuse. And children’s mental health has been severely impacted during the pandemic, in high-, middle-, and low-income countries alike.

These figures represent the lives and futures of millions of children — and the future of their societies.  The economic impact of pandemic-caused school closures alone could cause a $17 trillion loss in lifetime earnings for this entire generation of schoolchildren.

The world cannot continue to overlook children in the COVID-19 response and recovery. Children should not have to bear the cost of this pandemic for the rest of their lives.

UNICEF is calling on governments to put children at the center of global, national, and local pandemic response and recovery plans…