Unicef's boss fights to help humanity

Unicef's boss fights to help humanity

By Mehru Jaffer

JAKARTA (JP): When Rolf C. Carriere especially asked to come
here as head of Unicef Indonesia, he was aware that half the
population of the country's 210 million people lives in extreme
poverty with high maternal mortality rate and many children and
women poorly nourished.

But he also knew that in the two decades before the economic
crisis, the country had made tremendous gains in child survival
rates and development. The under five mortality rate dropped
dramatically and progress in achieving goals set by the World
Summit for Children was on the rise.

He sees a general improvement in the life of children here
from thirty years ago when he came to work in Jakarta for the
first time. Polio has been eradicated and there is a much higher
standard of immunization.

Indonesians are starting to get a feel for how big the problem
really is regarding child labor, child abuse and trafficking.
These are problems that were not adequately acknowledged before
and consequently little was done about them. He welcomes the new
candor in that at least there is an acceptance of the fact that
these problems exist. That is an important first step.

"Sure, there is a lot of unfinished business and that is why I
am here," Carriere told The Jakarta Post during a two-hour
interview held at the Unicef office on Jl. Sudirman in Central
Jakarta.

Undaunted by the economic, social and political upheaval that
engulfs Jakarta today, he believes that by being in the middle of
the trouble spot, the crisis can be prevented from getting worse
than it already is.

Born in Breda, Netherlands, the 56-year-old Carriere looks
upon his recent posting in Jakarta almost as a dream fulfillment.

"As a child, when I began to read my first books they had a
lot to do with life in Indonesia and even at a young age I seemed
to have had some notion as to where I would end up eventually,"
he said.

He has worked in different parts of the world including
Washington, India, Bangladesh, Burma and studied the food
shortage situation in different parts of Africa. Over the years
he has developed great respect for the wisdom inherent in many
Eastern traditions and is happy to remind that the Chinese
character for the word crisis is made up of two pictograms -- one
denoting danger and the other opportunity.

He agrees that the krismon (monetary crisis) has exposed
Indonesia to multiple dangers but it also offers an opportunity
to do more, in a more open society where much more is now known
about problems that were not talked about before like the exact
violations against children and women, HIV and AIDS. This, he
feels, is bound to make his task here more doable.

Deeply attracted by the thought of marrying world development
with spirituality, Carriere lauds the initiative that President
Abdurrahman "Gus Dur" Wahid has taken toward interfaith dialogue
between religions to find out what is common between religions
and what can be done collectively to improve the prospects of
development. He shared more of his thoughts and concerns during
an interview.

Question: Why does it seem that so much is done to improve the
lot of children and yet so much more still needs to be done?

Answer: A short answer to that one is because we forever set
even higher standards for ourselves as a world community. We are
emboldened by every success that we have had in the field of
social development and want to achieve more. To my mind the world
has made remarkable progress. Unfortunately, development is not a
sexy enough subject to make headline news. So all that we get to
hear about are the failures.

Q: But the reality shows that the number of children dropping out
of school is on the rise... more children are begging?

A: When I first came to Jakarta 30 years ago, I think there were
more children out on the street than now. The child labor
situation then was such that many more kids did not go to school.

This country has made some remarkable strides in social
development. The malnutrition rate amongst children came down to
20 percent. This is proof enough that we can solve all of these
problems. There is no mystery as to what has to be done.

Technically speaking, we can provide one spoon of iodine in a
lifetime to prevent loss of IQ points up to 10 to 15 points in
very young children. This can be prevented at the cost of one cup
of coffee per person per year. What is lacking is political will
and to prioritize financial resources so that they go down to
every village where people live.

These are the things that have to be talked about. Instead,
what makes headline news involves an incident that goes something
like this: the leader of an elite nation takes his shoe off and
bangs it at the United Nations to show his disagreement. Then he
tries to stab the president of the United States in Washington
and on the way back home stops by in London to rape the queen.

The media does have a responsibility to show that half the
glass is still empty as there is a lot of unfinished business....

Q: What is the role of the media while reporting development
activities?

A: I think it is to give equal space to the success stories. To
give development the importance it deserves. If not, then we will
give birth to more pessimists and cynics who become part of the
problem.

Q: How has the economic crisis affected the state of the
country's children?

A: There has been a dip, but today we know so much about what
children need. The problem is not being able to act on the basis
of that knowledge. Take the example of malnutrition. This is
often a result of interaction between infectious diseases mostly
diarrhea, measles and others and the ignorance in how to deal
with the disease, and not a shortage or non availability of food.

Q: Is the economic crisis like one step forward and two steps
backwards for you?

A: It is more like one step forward, half a step backward and
half a step to the side. A few weeks ago I was in Banyumas, East
Java. At the community center, I found that the weighing scales
were rusty, the number of cadre had dropped and volunteers seemed
distracted, the whole purpose of the program was forgotten.

As I see it, the problem lay in having lost focus. It is a
lost opportunity if an infant is not weighed, immunized and fed
well in the first two years of its life. We have to start from
the infant to do it right for the rest of a human being's life.

Q: If there was no red tape, no bureaucracy between you and the
problem how would you have performed?

A: I can do nothing by myself. We do need an infrastructure.
First and foremost financial resources are needed. Then to
properly design the program. Malnutrition is caused by a
combination of ignorance and infectious diseases. A sick child
has to be fed at least five or six times a day. To impart this
kind of education to all mothers needs networking. The main job
is to have the will to make things work, and not to lose focus.

Q: How did your concern for the very young first develop?

A: I was trained to be an economist. I came to work in Jakarta at
the United Nations in the field of food production and
nutritional issues in 1971. A colleague at Unicef asked me to do
a cost benefit ratio study of breast-feeding as compared to
breast milk food substitutes. That changed my entire attitude
towards development.

To help humanity we have to start from the infant. In fact we
cannot start early enough to take care of human beings to make
this world a better place.

On the basis of that study I joined Unicef and worked here for
five years during which time I started talking to knowledgeable
people as to what Islam says about health and nutrition. At that
time the person, who is today the President of Indonesia,
produced a book for Unicef on the same subject which we still
use. That report by Gus Dur has come often to my mind as I worked
with hunger, starvation and a considerable Muslim population in
Ethiopia and it has been used to deal with similar issues of
nutrition in other Islamic countries as well.

In Chapter 233 of the Koran, the Gus Dur report points out
that a mother shall suckle her baby for a period of two years. We
took it from there and the duration of breast feeding remains
higher here as compared to other countries. This is an enormous
blessing.

Not to support a program like this one would be collective
irrationality and yet strong commercial forces with myopic, short
term interests do oppose breast-feeding, that makes economic
sense as it costs nothing but is also a pregnancy prevention
device.

Q: You seem very tempted at the thought of using religion and
spirituality in the field of development. What is the connection?

A: Behind all religions lie deep wisdom. Religions guide us on to
an ethical path. The core of each religion is similar. The
differences are cultural. A common code of global ethics after
deep interfaith dialogues exists and accepted by the parliament
of world religions. And nobody has a quarrel with it. The
question is how do we make it operational? How do we incorporate
it into the various institutions that we have in each country?
How do we affect education, commerce and how is the media to
behave, bearing in mind the global code of ethics. What is
wonderful about the situation in Indonesia is that long before he
became President, Gus Dur was involved in interfaith dialogues.
This is a tradition set by Gus Dur that is extremely important,
not just for Indonesia but for the global community.

Q: What is the role of spirituality in developmental issues?

A: If spirituality has to do with raising the level of
consciousness then it is a part of development itself. At birth
we are virtually unconscious and we become more and more
conscious as we grow up. However it would be wrong to say that
having grown into rational adults it is the end state of
development. There are stages that go beyond the rational,
meditative states. That logic or mystical state is there in all
religions and is what gives us spirituality.

Q: How can this state of consciousness help improving life for
the world's children?

A: That has to be better understood. If there is an attempt to
participate in raising the collective consciousness of human
beings then we can allow disparity to decrease in a world where
three billion people continue to live in poverty on less than two
dollars a day while the other one billion lives on several
hundreds of dollars a day.

Q: Have you made a personal promise to yourself to help the
children of this country?

A: My first task remains to translate into action the mandate of
my organization. My personal passion in dealing with children is
to do it right from the very start of life.

Children represent a piece of humanity everyone is in favor
of. It is just that we tend to forget what is important to us. As
a world community we must never forget that once we were all
children, especially when allocations are made. Due resources
have to go to the welfare of the very young. What bothers me is
that the voices of children are not heard when important issues
are decided at global level. I believe in giving voice to the
children of the world.