Intercultural Competencies: UNICEF
Every single day, over five thousand children die from starvation, malnutrition or other hunger-related causes worldwide. Over a period of an entire year, that results in a total of over two million children dead simply from a lack of proper food alone. If that wasn’t shocking enough, nearly five million children worldwide died last year simply from preventable diseases, a lack of clean water and other relatively simple factors, a lack of medical care also displaying its effects on the child mortality rate (Hodal, 2019). That’s a total of over six-million children under the age of fifteen dying for such preventable reasons (Taylor, 2018). While these numbers are rather shocking simply for their sheer scale, it has to be understood that, with the proper context, these numbers can actually be seen as a good thing.
How, you might ask? First, it has to be said that a little over fifteen years ago, these numbers were generally reported as nearly twice as large as they are now, with a total of ten million children dying from preventable causes in the year 2000 and over thirteen million being reported dead just ten years earlier in 1990 (Taylor, 2018). One major reason for this sudden drop in child mortality rates around the world has to be attributed to one certain global organization dedicated to helping children worldwide.
Known as the United Nations Children’s Fund, or more commonly just as UNICEF, the organization itself was created on December 11th, 1946 by the United Nations General Assembly. The reason for the formation of the international organization was for the simple purpose of providing emergency food, supplies and healthcare to children and mothers in countries devastated by the most recent war of the time, that of World War II (UNICEF, 2016). For over seventy-two years since, UNICEF has continued its important goal of assisting those that it was formed to aid. In fact, just four years after the inception of the organization itself, UNICEF expanded its mandate, seeking to help not only those women and children suffering from the events of World War II, but to defend the rights, save the lives of and provide humanitarian aid to all women, children and families struggling to survive in developing countries across the world.
I chose to single out UNICEF as my global organization of choice because it’s long and storied history of international advocacy and humanitarian work. It’s immense global reach and multicultural make-up signify an organization that has made strong efforts into building a strong corporate culture with a sensitivity for intercultural relations and communication that has served it well for over seventy years (UNICEF, 2016). This is important to me because not only do I have a great deal of respect for UNICEF as an organization for what they do, but also for the standards they have set themselves to for so many years.
Humanitarian Outreach & Cultural Sensitivity
UNICEF is one of the larger and more prolific global organizations, as the United Nations-sponsored group maintains a presence in over one-hundred-and ninety countries and smaller territories. For an organization focused primarily on humanitarian aid, education and outreach, the primary portion of UNICEF’s work is in the field, those working for the organization focused on directly distributing aid to those in need (Taylor, 2018). Despite relying primarily on contributions from governments and private donors, UNICEF does not show favoritism in its outreach and makes careful and judicial use of its funds, ninety-two percent of all money they receive distributed directly into program services (Hodal, 2019).
Considering its size, scope and long history, there are a great many sources of information on the organization itself; some addressing the organization’s outreach, a few regarding the organization’s attempts to address cultural sensitivities, others speaking of the cultural missteps UNICEF has made over the years, and finally, another selection bringing up the severe scandals the global organization has been rocked by.
These sources of information include UNICEF’s own Conflict, Sensitivity, and Peacebuilding Programming Guide; “a tool for UNICEF field staff and leadership to understand, situate and operationalize conflict” as well as how to navigate potential obstacles brought about by cultural, social and political sensitivities (UNICEF, 2016). Another source of information I acquired detailed the organization’s outreach in regard to providing children worldwide with clean water in order to ease the global child mortality rate, as mentioned in the introduction to this essay (Hodal, 2019). A third article is one regarding multiple children’s advocates and other organizations criticizing UNICEF itself for having made an alliance with McDonalds, the fast-food conglomerate, in order to raise money; a move that many saw as the child aid organization “compromising its mission to promote good nutrition” in its choice to enter “into a partnership with a company known worldwide for its aggressive promotion of foods that contribute to ill health and poor nutrition” worldwide (Dwyer, 2002).
A fourth, but far from final, article addresses one of UNICEF’s most public missteps in the field of intercultural sensitivity, one in which they attempted to sponsor awareness for children in Africa through the use of blackface (Brea, 2007). This was a severe cultural misstep on their part and far from their only one, which rings as somewhat odd given the vast scope of UNICEF as an organization and their ability to detect these sorts of problems in most other cases (Sadaf Rashad Ali, 2013).
Reading these articles and reports, among several others, gave me a much deeper understanding on the organization, it’s scope and the depth of its outreach as well as the people that make it up. UNICEF is over seven thousand people in the field, working to advance humanitarian aid, education, food and medical care where it concerns children and families in developing countries worldwide. From what I’ve read, I am now aware that UNICEF bases it’s current actions and the majority of its outreach efforts on the most recent substantial research and information on what works to help give children the best start in life, to survive and thrive and to help them reach greater standards when it comes to their education.
When it comes down to it though, I felt that I was left with several more questions in regard to UNICEF’s missteps and mistakes. In my research, I found several more serious incidents such as a recent UNICEF scandal brought to light just over a year ago where it was reported that over sixty thousand cases of rape and sexual assault against women and children had been carried out by UNICEF-affiliated field staff (Helmhold, 2018). A former United Nations chief of operations at the UN Emergency Co-ordination Center even had this to say on the issue, “There are tens of thousands of aid workers around the world with pedophile tendencies, but if you wear a UNICEF T-shirt, nobody will ask what you’re up to (Helmhold, 2018)." The man even added that it was estimated that these sixty-thousand cases had been committed by over three thousand pedophiles working as field staff for both the UN and UNICEF.
All of this left me with the unsteady feeling that while UNICEF is doing a lot of good work, they still had a good deal farther to go in order to address the various problems, mistakes and missteps they have made as an organization. In fact, I couldn’t help but ask myself that considering how carefully the organization manages to maintain a positive image, considering their position as the premier child and family humanitarian aid provider for so long, exactly how many negative factors could have gone ignored and for how long? If it took ten years for something as serious as sixty-thousand rapes to make the news, how many other problems could have gone unseen?
I find myself trusting the veracity of the provided information and the sources I acquired them from because the information provided was either directly informative with no bias in regard to convincing me of an opinion, directly objective child health information that was verified in several other locations, or culturally insensitive incidents with context that were addressed from the position of those affected by said cultural insensitivity. Apart from the last one, the viewpoints of the author’s themselves did not matter as they were not attempting to sway my opinion one way or another and as for their objective; it was simply to convey information. Ergo, the context of the authors in these cases – barring one – do not matter.
Global Cultural Context & Myself
The most significant difference between the global context of an organization like UNICEF and my current context is the vastness of scope. While I have travelled to other countries myself and interacted with people and situations of a cultural context vastly different to what I would consider my norm, the sheer scope of the organization’s experience and reach in speaks of a level of multiculturalism and cultural diversity among its ranks and those that they interact with in a way no single person could hope to encompass or properly understand. Further along this line, while I may reside in a location that could only be what it is today because of the ever-ongoing increase in globalization, UNICEF could be seen as the ultimate example of that, an organization formed on the basis of globalist ideals, expanding aid to those in need regardless of cultural background.
As a large organization formed on these globalist ideals, the organization obviously does a great deal in connecting to hundreds of governments, primarily for the purpose of spreading its message and procuring funding. On the topic of funding, UNICEF also accepts private donations and affiliation for fundraising attempts, these involving that of affiliating themselves with popular football clubs in Europe to share their branding on the player’s shirts. UNICEF has effectively become a part of the background in the world we live in, a constant presence on the global field of knowledge.
Being part of this organization would require me to prepare for a great deal of cultural conflicts, in the sense that simply the aspects of cultural relativism and inherent differences in social conventions are likely to lead to obstacles. One of the major issues of note is that UNICEF is very focused on educating children and especially female children in particular, primarily due to the fact that young girls rarely receive education on the same level of boys in developing countries even in the modern day.
From a Western cultural standpoint or even from my own, more myopic, cultural context, this is an aspect of culture that I could see causing a great deal of conflict over as in many cases, girls are actively prevented from obtaining an education. Purposely trying to bring education to the female contingent of a population may cause even more conflict with far more than the individual population as it could stretch over into the government itself, causing problems for the organization as the field workers may forget to take into cultural relativity and intercultural sensitivity into mind.
Understanding what improprieties that may prop up is an important part of intercultural conflict management. UNICEF field workers do work in teams and it is more than likely that some team members in the field will be native to the area and due to possessing knowledge of cultural mores, they can assist you when it comes to communicating in an intercultural context. On the whole, developing greater knowledge of the correlation between culture and value orientation allows an individual within a multicultural organization forming a mental framework of what would be considered appropriate or inappropriate before possibly risking a mistake or offense. The organization has gained a certain level of cultural clout in the sense that, in most cases, it can expan across cultural frontiers with the sole purpose of it’s history and goal of humanitarian aid providing it defense from those who would normally be against what some would see as a ‘Westernized’ tool of social imperialism. All in all, UNICEF as an organization is one well-versed in multicultural adaptation and working for the benefit of globalization through humanitarian aid. Working with it would require one to become skilled in intercultural communication.
In general, while the organization has made some missteps in practice and its attempts to fundraise or raise awareness, the entire purpose and their goals being that of outreach. From my context, UNICEF would help me progress my cultural contexts and my own intercultural sensitivity. After all, cultural sensitivity occurs when people recognize and are aware that various ethnic groups of people have their own set of experiences, beliefs, values, and language that affect their perceptions and give context to their lived experience. What better organization is there to express such standards than UNICEF?
Bibliography
Brea, J. (2007, July 25). Saving Africa in blackface . Retrieved from The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/jul/25/savingafricainblackface
Dwyer, O. (2002, October 26). UNICEF comes under attack for Big Mac funding deal. BMJ (Clinical research ed.), p. 923.
Helmhold, J. (2018, February` 16). UN staff allegedly responsible for over 60,000 cases of sexual exploitation . Retrieved from The Jerusalem Post: https://www.jpost.com/International/UN-staff-allegedly-responsbile-for-over-60000-cases-of-sexual-exploitation-542817
Hodal, K. (2019, March 22). Dirty water 20 times deadlier to children in conflict zones than bullets. Retrieved from The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/mar/22/dirty-water-20-times-deadlier-to-children-in-conflict-zones-than-bullets-unicef
Sadaf Rashad Ali, D. J. (2013). Strike a Pose: Comparing Associated Press and UNICEF Visual Representations of the Children of Darfur. African Conlict and Peacebuilding Review, pp. 1-26. Retrieved from JSTOR.
Taylor, L. (2018, September 18). Child Deaths from Preventable Causes Have Been Cut in Half Since 2000. Retrieved from Global Citizen: https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/child-death-preventable/
UNICEF. (2016). Conflict Sensitivity and Peacebuilding Programming Guide. New York: UNICEF.
