Homage to an Exceptional Leader
by Fouad KronfolThe UNICEF history that spanned from 1972-1996 was indeed an exceptional tranche of its seventy-five year existence. It witnessed many of the most memorable events and notable personalities that have contributed to these descriptions of the organization. The leadership of UNICEF during these years was almost entirely during the tenures of Henry Labouisse and James Grant....Actually Labouisse took over the post of Executive Director in 1965 and Grant passed away in early 1995 leaving the short period until end 1996 as the tenure of Carol Bellamy.
My own career in UNICEF could easily be considered as an "optimum" one in that although I started working a few years under Maurice Pate, I have served throughout the entire tenures of both Labouisse and Grant, while Carol Bellamy signed my retirement plaque !
In earlier times UNICEF was often referred to as a "Family". If that were to be the context under which I served, then I would consider Maurice Pate as "the Great White Father"; Henry Labouisse as "My Favourite Uncle"; Jim Grant as "My Charismatic Cousin", and Carol Bellamy as "My Sister-in-Law".
I was too young and junior to have had any noteworthy experiences during the Pate era, but both with Labouisse and Grant I had grown professionally and in grade and was fortunate to have been senior enough to have much closer and more substantive relationships with both Executive Directors.
Henry Richardson Labouisse, came to UNICEF at an advanced age but with an impressive previous career as a development practitioner, diplomat and head of major governmental and non-governmental organizations. Among others he had worked with the Marshall Plan in Europe, with the United States Aid Agency, with the World Bank, as head of UNRWA, as well as US Ambassador to Greece. He resigned from the last post when Maurice Pate passed away to join UNICEF in 1965.
It is worthwhile here to recall some details on the persona of UNICEF's second Executive Director. Born in New Orleans he was considered by many as a "southern gentleman", with the accent on ‘Gentleman’, I would add - a product of famous Ivy League universities (Princeton and Harvard). He was a lawyer who practiced in New York City for a dozen years and then joined the US government during the Second World War and was appointed Counsellor for Economic Affairs in the Embassy in Paris, where he later played a key role as Chief of the Marshall Plan Special Mission to France.
His introduction to the United Nations came in 1954 when UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold appointed Labouisse as Director of the United Nations Relief & Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Beirut. Until 1958 he ably led this large agency in its mandate to provide food, shelter, health and education services to some 900,000 refugees in four countries of the MidEast region. It was also during that period that Labouisse had his first contacts with UNICEF. It had to do with Palestinians who were technically not eligible for refugee status, because they had not left their homes, but whose situation was equally precarious because the armistice demarcation line had separated them from their agricultural lands and thus, their livelihood. UNICEF Beirut picked up this project and continued it for a number of years.
For a short time in 1959 Labouisse consulted for the World Bank where he directed an economic survey of Venezuela which for the first time covered health and education issues. The next year, again at the request of S.G. Hammarskjold, he took a leave of absence from the World Bank to serve as Special Adviser in the UN's large scale emergency operation in the Congo (Zaire).
Labouisse went back to service with the US Government when President John Kennedy appointed him Director of the US International Cooperation Administration, a precursor of the Agency for International Development (USAID). It was interesting to learn that one of his assistants in ICA was James Grant. Labouisse was then asked to serve as Ambassador of the US to Greece from 1962 to 1965. It was then that Maurice Pate suddenly passed away, and Labouisse resigned from his post to join UNICEF as its second Executive Director in 1965.
On the personal side, Henry Labouisse was first married to Elizabeth Scriven Clark, an heiress of the Singer sewing machine company who died in 1945. In 1954 he married Eve Curie, the youngest daughter of Nobel Laureates Pierre and Marie Curie, who was an author and well known journalist. While serving as Ambassador to Greece, Labouisse was a benefactor of the American Farm School, a vocational training center for rural Greek youth in Thessaloniki. Following his retirement in 1979 Labouisse served as Chairman of the Board of the School for some six years.
I always considered his tenure as having started with a "Big Bang"...the Nobel Peace Prize of 1965...and ended with another "Bigger Bang"...the International Year of the Child" in 1979. The evolution of UNICEF that was book-ended by these two major milestones of its history was one of remarkable growth, increased professionalism, major expansion of fields of involvement, and growing global public recognition and support.
Quite simply, after the initial emergency relief phases in the war torn regions and an important but limited focus on health and nutrition, the organization came into its own during the UN's Second Development Decade as a 'development agency" with a branching out into many new substantive fields as it gradually but surely freed itself from the confines of UN Specialized Agency approbation to stand on its own as the world's premium organization for the welfare of children.
The breakthrough was best illustrated by the famous Bellagio Conference of 1964, but grew in intensity and depth as the organization acquired more experience and knowledge and developed such concepts as country programming, the whole child, planning for children, and acting as the UN's "lead agency ".
 |
| Henry Labouisse Meets Staff Member in Nigeria during a Famine Period Photo Credit Louis Gendron |
The series of regional conferences on planning for children consisted of a major move into these new fields of endeavour for UNICEF. The last in the series was the Lome Conference in 1972 which concentrated on planning for children in West Africa. Another very substantial event was the WHO/UNICEF sponsored international conference on Primary Health Care held in Alma Ata, Kazakhstan which gave a major impetus to the WHO slogan of "Health for All by 2000" and helped reorient UNICEF work in the health field.
All the while UNICEF continued its involvement with both natural and man-made emergencies, and maintained its declared principle of helping children on both sides of conflicts.
During the Labouisse era the range and scope of UNICEF programme activity augmented with the following areas: child health care, including EPI, control of diarrhoeal diseases, essential drugs, communicable disease control, water & sanitation, responsible parenthood and family planning, child nutrition, education - both formal and nonformal, pre-vocational training,women and girls, children in urban areas, to name but a few. These and other areas affecting the situation of children and mothers in different communities within developing countries led ultimately to the concept and the promulgation of the "Basic Services Policy '' by the UN General Assembly in 1976.
This programming methodology spearheaded UNICEF actions in most of the countries it served, until the early !980's when Jim Grant introduced GOBI and the CSDR . One observation by a senior UNICEF staffer was that the "conservative" Labouisse shepherded the organization's actions from a limited area of food and health to a broad panoply of community services affecting the overall development of children, while the "progressive" Grant re-focused the organization on fewer areas but those directly affecting the survival of children.
The Labouisse period was not without some major challenges, however.
- From 1967-1969 UNICEF dealt with a major emergency, the Biafra situation in Nigeria where assistance was provided to both sides of the civil strife and involved delicate negotiations with conflicting authorities.
- The global economic crisis coming from the 1973 oil price hikes by OPEC brought about some important new criteria for UNICEF's programme allocations with the creation of the "most seriously affected country, (MSA)," category in addition to the Least Developed Country (LDC) already used in UN circles.
- The Indochina peninsula with the denouement of the Vietnam war and the Khmer Rouge revolution which brought about the Kampuchea emergency, were two especially difficult political issues confronting Labouisse.
The creation of the Indochina Peninsula Liaison Group (IPLG) at HQ was an action that enabled UNICEF to provide a coordinated approach to all three states in the affected area, including the launching of the Kampuchea emergency programme where UNICEF for the first time was given the role of "lead agency" by the UN SG. This major relief and rehabilitation effort became, according to Sir Robert Jackson, the first "billion dollar" UN/UNICEF led emergency .Like Viet Nam it had a politically sensitive angle since the the Khmer government continued to be the officially recognized entity by the UN, while the new government in Phnom Penh dealt with matters within the country. This led to the opening of the controversial Thai cross -border operation for aid to Khmer controlled areas.
On internal matters, Labouisse early on developed very congenial and constructive relations with the UNICEF Executive Board which itself was in a state of flux. The number of sessions were reduced to a single one each year. Countries were eager to host the Executive Board meetings, first in Bangkok in 1964, but followed by Addis Ababa in 1966, Santiago in 1969, Mexico City in 1979 and lastly in Rome in 1984.
Other than programme and policy matters the Labouisse era was also notable for many managerial and operational changes, improvements or innovations.
- On the financial side the annual revenue of UNICEF increased from $33 million in 1965 to $250 million in 1979.It is to be noted that almost all of the funds were for "general resources".
- It was only in 1968 that the Executive Board authorized the receipt of supplementary funds as "special assistance", including donations in kind. While governments provided the bulk of funds, the growth of private contributions from greeting card sales and "Trick or Treat" was considerable. The millions of cards being sold by National Committees and UNICEF offices around the world were not only becoming an important public information avenue on children, but also brought in considerable revenue for UNICEF.
- It was evident that UNICEF was living up to its reputation as the "people to people '' organization, the only UN Agency to have such a widespread and popular acknowledgement.
- Other noteworthy operational changes included the new concept of "Administrative & Programme Support Budget" ; programme budgets were changed from "allocations" to "commitments" and the introduction of the Basic Assistance List into programme budgeting. It should be remembered that all this was before the advent of computers to the workplace !!!
- On structural and organizational matters, the closure of the Paris office in 1973, effectively ended the involvement of UNICEF in programme matters within Europe.The newly established European regional entity in Geneva took on responsibility for work with National Committees and the growing number of NGOs relationships and other fundraising and information activities.
- This was accompanied by the consolidation of supply operations in UNIPAC Copenhagen.
- This also led soon after to the North Africa area office in Algiers being attached to the Middle East and the creation of the new MENA region.The growth in revenue, countries served, staff increases and other rapid changes in the operation of the organization led to the need to review the overall workings of UNICEF.
- The Executive Board requested an overall management study in 1975 which was carried out by external consultants from the Scandinavian Institute for Administrative Research (SIAR). Labouisse then carried out a number of the recommendations relative to strengthening field offices, developing knowledge networks, improving coordination in HQ, more control over finance and budgets and better personnel management.
- The latter field saw the creation of the Division of Personnel (separate from Administration) ,more personnel development (including the staff seminars run by Herman Stein) , increased appointment of national professional officers and the establishment of the Global Staff Association of UNICEF.
At first the idea of another "UN year" in the second Development Decade was not very attractive to Labouisse as he thought it would detract from the regular work of the organization, probably cause political tensions, and mainly cost UNICEF an important sum of money. On the public information side he believed that the organization's activities and reputation spoke for themselves and did not need another big "celebration".
The convergence of child services that resulted in the Basic Services policy had just started being implemented and it was felt that the organization needed the time and effort to put it into practice in all field offices.
However with the continued urging of the NGO world and the National Committees, Labouisse finally accepted the idea, but set some conditions
- no big conference,
- funding should come from separate sources,
- the administration of the year to be carried out by a separate entity.
The IYC was kicked off early in 1979 with a successful show in the UN General Assembly hall with major entertainers taking part and donating all or part of their music proceeds to UNICEF. The range, scope and number of organizations and activities during the year was phenomenal while its contribution to the efforts of raising the cause of children in the overall international political ethos was inestimable.
Naturally, though it took pains to avoid being the instrument for the actions of the IYC, UNICEF's own image, reputation and overall programme undoubtedly benefited greatly from the success of the Year.
As an aside, and only from my philatelic angle, there were close to 200 countries and territories that issued some 900 different stamps and 150 covers to commemorate the Year .These translated to millions or maybe billions of goodwill messages on behalf of the world's children...no other public event, not even the World Summit for Children..came close. As Maggie Black reported in her seminal book "The Children and the Nations'',during the October 1979 UN General Assembly review of the IYC, Labouisse, ever the humble and modest person that he was, said to John Grun, "You know, I do believe it's worked !".... It sure did !!!
“Mister Labouisse”, as he was known within the organization, led UNICEF throughout this important phase of its evolution with noteworthy support from his lieutenants Dick Heyward and Adelaide Sinclair (until 1967) and Charles Egger after that. While major growth and expansion was going on in the UNICEF field offices, the NYHQ Front Office remained largely unchanged for the duration of the Labouisse era. Many would attribute this long term continuity in leadership as one major factor in the maturation of the organization and its overall development.
Comments
Post a Comment