Catherine Russell, Unicef: War is the worst thing for children

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1:26Catherine Russell:Hello, I'm Netta Tawfiq, the BBC's New York correspondent, and this is the interview from the BBC World Service, the best conversations coming out of the BBC, people shaping our world from all over the world. I want to get freedom. I like their freedom.

1:43Nada Tawfik:A gender-equal world would be a better world for men too. We need this is fire. We need healing. We need trust.

1:50Catherine Russell:These companies don't really, they don't care what governments do.

1:53Nada Tawfik:This is a war. The first thing that we want is the war to end.

1:58Catherine Russell:For this interview, I met Catherine Russell, executive director of UNICEF, the United Nations agency responsible for protecting and supporting children in the BBC studios in New York. Before taking up the role in 2022, she spent decades in government and diplomacy, including as assistant to President Joe Biden and the director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, as well as serving in senior roles at the U.S. State Department focused on global women's issues and international development. Now leading UNICEF at a time of unprecedented conflict, displacement, and humanitarian need, she talks about the impact of aid cuts and the challenges facing children around the world.

2:41Nada Tawfik:To me, the most vulnerable are almost always children, right? Because they don't have any ability to change their circumstance, right? They don't start these wars. They are powerless to stop them, but they suffer so much in these situations. And it certainly bothers me to see it. Let me put it that way. I am able, obviously, to do my job, but I have seen many of these situations where children are just in desperate need. And it does make me wonder, you know, what kind of world is this where we can let this happen to the people who are most vulnerable?

3:15Catherine Russell:Welcome to the interview from the BBC World Service with Catherine Russell.

3:21Nada Tawfik:War is the worst thing for children. Why? In part because they are impacted directly. Children can be killed, obviously, in conflicts. Increased use of drones is really worrying to us. All these things are directly impacting the safety and security of children. Also, children rely very much on government services, right? Education, health care, child protection services. Those are almost always disrupted in situations of conflict. So now we have Ukraine started, then Gaza, Sudan. I mean, it has been one thing after another. And where I sit, it feels like none of these conflicts ever really come off our list of worries, right?

3:59Nada Tawfik:We just keep adding more and more. We estimate now one in five children in the world lives in a conflict setting or is fleeing from a conflict setting, those are really high numbers. And it just means it's stretching the capacity of governments and international community to really respond to that. On top of that, we have had just very serious budget cuts. And so while the needs are so enormous, the needs are growing, the resources have been cut. And I think that confluence of events has made things even more complicated than they were in the past.

4:32Catherine Russell:And so if we go back to when you first began leading UNICEF in 2022, do you remember what your most pressing concern then was and what you hoped to achieve? Because it was post-Donald Trump's first term. People were still recovering from COVID. Russia had invaded Ukraine. So if we go back to that time, what was your most pressing concern?

4:55Nada Tawfik:Such a great question. When I first came in, it was two weeks really before the Ukraine invasion happened. And so I was looking at what UNICEF does. And I had an interest, which is, how do we think about girls? When I was at the State Department, I was the ambassador for women and girls at the State Department in the US. And I became so interested in adolescent girls and how they face a certain set of challenges. When they drop out of school, in many places, they are vulnerable to violence. They are more likely to get married early. They're more likely to start having children early and often.

5:28Nada Tawfik:And it really sets their life in a direction that I thought was very sad. It became so clear to me that the single most important intervention at that point was to try to keep them in school as long as possible. So when I got to UNICEF, I was assuming that that would be a priority. And in fact, it has been a priority for us at UNICEF. But, you know, literally two weeks later, Ukraine started. It has been just madness since I got there, you know, one thing after another. And it's been very, very challenging in ways I never could have imagined when I when I first thought about coming there.

6:04Catherine Russell:Well, you say madness because we are facing the most conflicts ever since World War II. And you talk about wanting to prolong education, but in times of emergencies, it really is about supporting children with the very basics. I mean, can you give us a sense about how the needs of children have changed? You look at today's world compared to 10 to 20 years ago, for example. How has the situation for children changed?

6:33Nada Tawfik:Well, let me say it this way. You know, we're coming up this year at UNICEF on our 80th anniversary, which is amazing to think about. And over that time, there has been certainly a development in terms of what has been the major challenges for children. And there has been a lot of progress in that time, too. The international community was able to reduce under-five mortality for the first time ever in a really significant way. We reduced child marriage to an extent. We got more children immunized. So huge successes. But as you're saying, this time now is marked by just the incredible number of challenges that we are facing.

7:10Nada Tawfik:And that is really these conflicts.

7:12Catherine Russell:Let's discuss some of the places you visited, because UNICEF works in 190 countries. You've met hundreds of children. In Somalia, you went in March. You know, there are warnings about a rapidly intensifying hunger emergency. What was the situation like on the ground for children? And what affected you about what you saw and heard?

7:34Nada Tawfik:Well, Somalia is an example of where many bad things are happening at one time, right? So Somalia has been a place of conflict. There are real challenges, even in terms of climate. You know, it's very dry. We see very high numbers of children who are malnourished in Somalia. And I saw some of those children when I was there. And seeing a child who is really on the verge of starvation is something that, honestly, I wish I'd never seen in my life. I hope most people never get to see such a terrible thing. Because what happens really is a child's body kind of turns on itself. And it doesn't have any way to sustain itself.

8:11Nada Tawfik:And so you can walk into a hospital setting for children. It can be full of children, often two children to a bed. mothers are in there and the whole room is quiet. And it's because children are so weak that they can't even cry. So to see that and to see it as often as I've seen it is really a tragedy because I think we live in a world where there is plenty to eat, right? There is plenty of food. There are plenty of resources. The question that we all have to struggle with is why don't those resources go to the people who are most in need and most vulnerable? And to me, the most vulnerable are almost always children, right?

8:48Nada Tawfik:Because they don't have any ability to change their circumstance, right? They don't start these wars. They are powerless to stop them, but they suffer so much in these situations. And it certainly bothers me to see it. Let me put it that way. I am able, obviously, to do my job, but I have seen many of these situations where children are just in desperate need. And it does make me wonder, you know, what kind of world is this where we can let this happen to the people who are most vulnerable.

9:15Catherine Russell:And I mean, just on that point, because many will share that sentiment. I mean, how do you explain to people how the situation has been allowed to deteriorate so dramatically? And when you speak to world leaders, how do you put into words what you've seen?

9:30Nada Tawfik:I try to explain to them and share the stories that I see. You know, I was in Sudan not too long ago. And there I had, you know, on the one hand, young boys telling me of how terrible it was they lived near Al-Fasher. They were fleeing. They talked about how they were always afraid. They were with their families. They would go through these checkpoints. They were constantly worried. They get to a school and they're doing okay. Then I hear from girls who tell me about situations where there were these militia people coming in. They were raping women, killing women, raping them in front of their families, really to terrorize communities.

10:06Nada Tawfik:So I feel like I see all of it and I try to share those stories so that people understand because it's very hard, you know, when you're looking at the numbers to really understand what that means for individual children, right, or individual families, how terrible it is. And I think, you know, I live in here in New York, and sometimes just trying to figure out how to explain to people what that's like. I feel like it's a bit of my job to try to say, look, everyone has worries in their lives, fine, but try not to forget the people who are most needy in the world at the same time.

10:37Catherine Russell:And you mentioned Sudan. I mean, 825 ,000 children under five are at the risk of death from severe malnutrition, but this is often called the forgotten war. Why do you think, you know, the reality of that is not enough to galvanize leaders into action?

10:53Nada Tawfik:If I knew the answer to that, I think I probably would be more effective at my job. I don't know the answer. I think people are, and this goes for leaders, governments, you know, there are so many problems in the world. And I think sometimes it's just hard to get attention to things. Now, my experience is when people do focus on things, they don't want to see children suffering, right? They don't want to imagine that children are dying. And I think it's why UNICEF does get a lot of support around the world from individuals and from governments, because when they think about it, they don't want that.

11:25Nada Tawfik:It's just that they're thinking about many other things at the same time. And these political problems are not getting solved. And I think, you know, where we it as humanitarians, we're trying to pick up the pieces of that. We are not really in a position to solve the problems, but we have to keep reminding people that they should encourage their leaders to do their best to make these things end so that children have some kind of decent prospects.

11:46Catherine Russell:And you've spoken about the changing technology in warfare. And, you know, just because we're on Sudan, you know, you said armed drones are responsible for nearly 80 % of reported child casualties. How concerned are you about how AI and changing technologies is going to impact children in the future when it comes to conflict?

12:06Nada Tawfik:I mean, we're certainly worried about it. This new kind of warfare, which is driven so much by drones or by bombardments, can just be indiscriminate when it comes to children, or civilians more generally. And our view is that everyone needs to be mindful of how these are impacting children. You know, when you go to some of these places, they'll talk about, and this was happening in Sudan, they were saying, you know, for a while they were hearing these drones constantly over. And I think it's unnerving to people, right? Because they can't see them, but they can hear them often. Children describe it as a terrifying situation.

12:40Nada Tawfik:So I think new technology, I mean, on the one hand, you know, just more generally with AI would say, we see tremendous potential in some of our work. And we're working with some of the companies who do AI And just as an example, thinking about education, because we do a lot of education for children around the world. And what we're seeing is, you know, there are hundreds of millions of children right now who are out of school, many more who are in school and not learning. This is a crisis in part because of conflict, but also in addition to conflict, right? It happens outside of conflict, too.

13:13Nada Tawfik:And honestly, it's one of the things that does give me the most anxiety and worry, because if these children don't get educated, it's hard to imagine what kind of future they have. So we've been working with the companies not to use AI to teach children, but to use AI to support teachers and to train teachers. And we think there's tremendous possibility there. But, of course, we see the dangers. I think these weapons are one danger. Another danger is that there are a lot of sexual images of children on these AI platforms, and we're very worried about that. And I think very much believe that AI needs to be regulated in a way to avoid some of the dangers, particularly to children who are very vulnerable to it.

13:54And when we talk about education and funding, I mean, Sudan, you have a displacement crisis that makes that difficult.

14:02Catherine Russell:In Gaza, certainly there are no schools. I mean, the living conditions there, you've described it as a hellscape. How can you advance on education and mental health in situations like that?

14:17Nada Tawfik:Let me say two things. One is on education, and this is just a bright spot, so I have to share one bright spot, which is we actually are getting children back into some sort of learning situations in Gaza. Not everybody, but we're getting a significant number of children into some kind of classrooms. They're not permanent, but it's better than it was. And so that is a small bright spot is to try to make sure that children have some structure in their day, because otherwise it's terrible. They're not learning. And for children, if you say as an adult, two years, I mean, think maybe back to COVID, right?

14:50Nada Tawfik:That can be terrible, a two-year interruption in your life. But when you're a child, two years is a big percentage of your life, right? And a lot of these children, if they're not in school, a lot of them don't end up going back. So it's one small bright spot is that we are getting children into some sort of learning in Gaza. And I'm happy about that. And having said that, you know, the circumstance there is incredibly challenging for children and for everyone who lives there. There's so much rubble. Water and sanitation is a serious problem. UNICEF does a lot of work in that space. But it is very hard to get all the supplies in, the parts in that we need.

15:24Nada Tawfik:And we're seeing children with scabies and other skin ailments. We're seeing reports of children who are being bitten by rats. And I mean, that's a horrible image. I mean, honestly, it's like the thing of nightmares, right? So I think we really need to try to continue to push hard to make the situation better there. Because right now, there are still our children who are being killed in that situation. You know, it's better than it was. And we're grateful for that. But there's a long, long, long way to go.

15:51Catherine Russell:You mentioned you're making progress in Gaza. I mean, how are you getting kids into schools? How are you able to do that?

15:57Nada Tawfik:Well, the magic of what we do is that we really are on the ground in these communities. We're on the ground before conflicts start. We're on the ground during the conflicts and we stay afterwards. So we know these communities. We have a lot of people who work for us who are from the communities. So we are able to, I think, inspire some trust with the communities and confidence and we know what needs to get done. So there we are essentially intense setting up facilities where children can learn. And it's not perfect, but it's a lot better than not having it at all.

16:33Catherine Russell:You're listening to The Interview from the BBC World Service.