UNICEF head Carol Bellamy aims to triumph past tragedy
UNICEF head aims to triumph past tragedy
By SARA KUGLER
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
NEW YORK -- Carol Bellamy has witnessed her share of horrors as head of the United Nations children's agency for the past 10 years, from traumatized Iraqi children to starving Sudanese babies to frightened tsunami orphans. Through it all, she says, she's tried to push forward.
"You can't just stand there and be helpless," she says. "You have to do something."
The 63-year-old executive director of United Nations Children's Fund, or UNICEF, who leaves her post April 30, recently returned from Asia's tsunami-devastated regions. Of more than 150,000 people killed, more than a third are believed to be children, and countless more were orphaned.
She says she deals with the suffering she witnesses by taking action. "Are we doing something, are we doing enough, can we do more?" she says she constantly asks.
In an interview with The Associated Press in her office overlooking the East River last week, Bellamy spoke of concentrating UNICEF's attention on disease prevention, rebuilding schools, and finding ways to make children happy again.
An example of the latter: In Sri Lanka, Bellamy said she saw a boy happily playing with a cricket bat handed out by volunteers - an image of progress that sticks with her.
"Maybe later he was crying and feeling terrible again, but he was at least laughing at that point, he was OK at that point," she said.
Bellamy has always tried to look beyond adversity. As a schoolgirl growing up in New Jersey, if she did badly on a test, her response was "to repress that and go on to the next one."
She made that comment in 1985 after losing to Ed Koch in the New York City mayor's race. She was the first woman to run for City Hall, after several years as the first woman president of the City Council.
"I just go on to the next thing," she said at the time.
Not that Bellamy isn't shaken by the hardship she encounters as executive director of UNICEF, overseeing more than 7,000 people in more than 150 countries.
Touring villages nearly swept away by the tsunami, she recalled she was stopped cold by their eerie silence - areas that were once bustling, but now "so quiet because everyone was gone."
Under her leadership, Bellamy says, UNICEF has strengthened its capacity to respond rapidly to emergencies like the tsunami, and has emphasized restoring normalcy and routine - like schooling - in disrupted communities.
The organization also has increased support for fighting the HIV/AIDS pandemic and child violence and exploitation, she said.
"It was a great organization when I came here," said Bellamy, who talks fast and gestures excitedly with her hands. "But I think I've strengthened it and made it more relevant."
She's not without critics. The Lancet, a respected British medical journal, recently wrote that she had misdirected UNICEF's attention toward children's rights and away from children's health.
Bellamy said the criticism was unfounded because such basic children's issues cannot be separated.
"You don't say, 'We're doing rights, not health,' or 'We're doing rights, not education,'" she said. "It's all connected."
Bellamy arrived at the job in 1995 from a post as director of the Peace Corps under former President Bill Clinton, 30 years after she'd served as a volunteer for the organization in Guatemala.
As a volunteer, she taught families to boil water to prevent disease, and promoted immunizations and the building of latrines - lessons of child survival that are the building blocks for the work she now promotes at UNICEF.
Clinton paid tribute to Bellamy last week, as it was announced that she'd be replaced after two five-year terms - the maximum under term limits - by outgoing Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman.
"Carol has been a strong and effective voice on behalf of the world's most vulnerable children, leading the fight against poverty, disease, abuse and discrimination," he said in a statement.
Donna Shalala, secretary of health and human services under Clinton and a longtime Bellamy friend, described her as "funny, intense and smart," and told the AP that "people have always underestimated her skill because she doesn't have a huge ego, and she has always put children first."
Single and with no children of her own, Bellamy is looking forward to her new job: heading the Brattleboro, Vt.-based World Learning and its School for International Training. The group prepares students and professionals to work in international development.
"It lets me stay involved, in a small way, in trying to improve cross-cultural understanding," Bellamy said. "This is a small world and we don't all have to love each other, but a little bit more tolerance would be useful."
