The Princess
by Shahida Azfar
What made this so? First and foremost, it was the management style of the Chief who transformed us into a team from a group of very disparate individuals with diverse backgrounds, experience and nationalities. Second was the open space office arrangement, which forced us out of our physical, mental and social silos to interact with each other on a daily basis. Last but not least was the strong commitment each one of us had to provide the much needed support to countries in Africa, which were going through multiple issues and which the Board had decreed as the region of highest priority. The concept of “complex emergencies” articulated by Fouad Kronfol for countries in Africa as they faced simultaneously multiple emergencies, enabled Africa Section to provide comprehensive support in both “good times and bad” and hence it became a “one stop shop” for countries. Thus, the Emergency Section at HQs did not deal with emergencies in Africa.
One area of focus was Southern Africa which was particularly vulnerable due to wars, internal conflicts, drought, famine and destabilization of neighboring countries by South Africa.
Several efforts were made to bring the world’s attention to this sub-region. I was asked to “testify” or rather present evidence on the situation in Mozambique to the US Senate Committee on Hunger chaired by Mr. Mickey Leland. One of UNICEF’s landmark publications entitled “Children on the Front Line” focused on the devastating effects on children by South Africa’s destabilizing efforts on neighboring countries. It was hailed as a breakthrough publication. However, what it initially lacked was a chapter on the effect of apartheid in South Africa on black children. As program officer for Southern Africa, I was “commanded” to get this done, a challenging task as we had no access, no relation, no contacts in South Africa and, frankly, I had no knowledge of the lay of the land. I started researching by going to Columbia University. Luckily I discovered that the Head of Pediatric Department of Natal University, Professor Jerry Coovadia was delivering a lecture on effects of apartheid on health especially of children. This provided the much needed breakthrough. Not only did I learn a lot from the lecture, but I was also able to engage Professor Coovadia to prepare the much needed chapter for the second edition which was launched by Mr. Grant in Harare.
Another exciting initiative I was involved with was to organize the immunization of children in UNITA held areas in Angola, as per Mr. Grant’s instructions. Again, a very challenging task without access to UNITA held areas, knowledge, nor contacts. The only option was to partner with ICRC who worked on both sides of the conflict. For this I flew to Geneva and secured their agreement to oversee and monitor the program. The next issue was to determine the type of support UNICEF would provide through ICRC to UNITA to implement the program. Mr. Grant was personally involved in these discussions. Initially, he was very much against us providing 4 wheel drive vehicles that could be used in the armed conflict, but later he agreed when he got convinced that due to the terrain no other mode of transportation would suffice.
What made the Africa Section so special, was that we all helped each other with advice and support even on our personal issues. The Chief kept a benevolent but vigilant eye on all of us from his vantage point in the open space, and his executive assistant, Margaret Williams was ever willing and ready to lend extra support as and when needed.
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