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.