UNICEF Talk with Carmen van Heese

Sharing her 25-year journey as a United Nations humanitarian worker around the globe, Ms Carmen Van Heese will unfold some of the leading topics on the humanitarian action agenda in the past decade and how they shaped humanitarian work today. She will deep dive on themes such as Linking Humanitarian and Development programming (Nexus), Youth in Emergency and Accountability to Affected Population. She considers these are among core themes if to address humanitarian challenges in Asia where she has been working for UNICEF most recently.

South Asia is highly prone to human-caused and natural disasters, including droughts, storms, floods. Many of those have a repetitive and somewhat predictable nature and puts more than 750 million people in South Asia at risk of multiple emergencies. Moreover, studies have proven that those most affected are often the ones who are already vulnerable before disasters strike. To break the cycle from poverty, fragility and reactive disaster response,- alignment between humanitarian action and ongoing development efforts is a necessity. A call is made to ensure a joint two track approach of humanitarian and development interventions to optimize support that mitigate impact of disasters and allow children and their caretakers to reach their full potential.

Special attention needs to further be given to Youth. With some 340 million adolescents in South Asia – almost 30 per cent of the total adolescents in the world. Youth are therefore not only an important group among the population that may be affected by disasters and need tailored support- Youth groups also presents an important ally in emergency programming before, during emergency and to help in defining a future outlook.
Placing people, including children and youth, and their communities at the center of humanitarian action will improve the quality and effectiveness of humanitarian response. This links to strengthening Accountability to Affected Population (AAP). Not only do government and beneficiaries increasingly hold organizations to account,- accountability is at the heart of Core Humanitarian Standards which promotes an active commitment of humanitarian organizations to act responsibly, effectively and efficiently.

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