UNICEF

Dave Kopel on UNICEF on National Review Online

Americans mostly know UNICEF through the “trick or treat for UNICEF” campaigns. The “trick” is on the donors who think that UNICEF is all about helping poor children.

UNICEF has been a major financier of Palestinian “summer camps” which encourage children to become suicide bombers. One such camp is named for Wafa Idris, a female suicide bomber.

UNICEF is the primary funder for the “Palestinian Youth Association for Leadership and Rights Activation” (PYALARA), which UNICEF calls “a major strategic partner in Palestine.” Materials produced by the group are frequently used in schools operated by UNICEF.

The organization claims that its mission is “expanding awareness of one’s roots and identity, environment and culture, as well as of other countries and the world at large.” Yet PYALARA’s products follow the typical line of terrorist propaganda, in which nothing is the fault of the Palestinians, everything is the fault of the Jews, and there is never any effort to consider the merits of Israel’s position on anything.

For example, one PYALARA article was admiring a biography of the recently-deceased terrorist Abu Ali Mustafa.

Not that UNICEF blames Israel for everything. Bianca Jagger, in her official capacity as “UNICEF ambassador,” has toured the Middle East telling audiences that the United States is the source of evil in the modern world.

As for the actual needs of children, UNICEF is sometimes an obstacle to progress. For example, UNICEF has been pressuring Guatemala to stop allowing inter-country adoptions. That is, UNICEF would prefer a child to languish in a Guatemalan orphanage rather than be adopted by a loving family in the United States.

UNICEF’s focus on politics and political correctness has come at the expense of saving the lives of the approximately ten million children under the age of five who die each year from preventable causes.

According to UNICEF, the major cause of child poverty in the world is the free market—even though countries with free markets have vastly lower levels of child poverty than do the kleptocratic, statist economies extolled by UNICEF.

The organization today stills promotes the Brazilian gun prohibition lobby Viva Rio, and funds the pro-terrorist Palestinian Youth Association for Leadership and Rights Activation as one of its “partners” in what it calls “occupied Palestinian territory.” UNICEF also “partners” with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, which uses ambulances to transport terrorists and their weapons, and whose personnel have participated in suicide bombings.

UNICEF’s executive board includes China (whose forced abortion policy is neither pro-life, nor pro-choice, nor pro-child) and Bhutan (where children are among the many victims of the regime’s human rights abuses). UNICEF has doled out unaccountable money to the North Korean regime.

The good-hearted children who “trick or treat for UNICEF” don’t know about UNICEF’s sordid allies, of course. So instead of simply rejecting the requests of the children, gently explain that you don’t want to give money to UNICEF because dictatorships like China help run the organization, and some of UNICEF’s money helps pro-terrorism groups. Then, put a dollar (or five, or ten) in a bag of your own, and tell the children that because of their trick-or-treating, you will be giving more money to a different charity (which you can name for them) which uses all of it money to help children. And if your child’s school is contemplating a UNICEF fundraiser, politely encourage the administration to pick a better charity.

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