NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 11TH – Italy reaffirms its strong support for UNICEF: “…let me say that Italy has been honored to sit in the Board over the last two years. We will continue to provide our active contribution also outside the Board in 2020 and look forward to re-entering the Board in 2021,” said Mariangela Zappia, Italy’s Permanent UN Rappresentative.
“It is necessary to intensify our common efforts for the full implementation of UNICEF’s mandate, in accordance with the Strategic Plan and in alignment with the 2030 Agenda and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. UNICEF is an essential actor for the full implementation of the Convention. We all have to advance along this road, without hesitation and – I want to stress here – avoiding any push back,” added the Ambassador.
Zappia reminded the Executive Board of UNICEF’s first ‘Leading Minds for Children and Young People’ event, taking place next November 7-9 in Florence. Italy will offer this conference -aimed at tackling the most pressing challenges to mental health during adolescence- its full support. The event will be taking place at the Centro Innocenti in Piazza Santissima Annunziata.
The meeting of UNICEF’S Executive Board took place while in the gardens of the Headquarters lay three thousand blue backpacks, organized like tombstones to represent, in the words of the Ambassador: “the dramatic and unacceptable loss of children’s life in conflict, an image that urge all of us to do more and to do better”. (@OnuItalia)