UNICEF: Italy calls upon Executive Board to endorse new Strategic Plan

NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 7 – Joining a meeting of the UNICEF Executive Board, the Italian Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Maurizio Massari, thanked the Executive Director Henrietta H. Fore for her “passionate and effective” leadership over the years.

“Italy commends UNICEF’s relentless work and called upon the Board to fully endorses its Strategic Plan 2022-2025, an essential stepstone towards effective multilateral development cooperation”, Massari said later on Twitter.

Henrietta Fore, who resigned in July in order to devote herself fulltime to caring for her husband who is suffering from what she described as a serious health issue, has been UNICEF’s Director since January 2018. “The Plan reflects all of what we have learned together over the last four years — including the hard-learned lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic — as we strive to help countries and communities rebuild, recover and strengthen all of the systems that support human development”, the Director said as she opened the Board meeting.

Fore added that “the Plan reflects UNICEF’s universal mandate to reach all children, including those living in middle and high-income countries. It features gender and disability prominently across every aspect of our programming. This is in line with our commitment to the SDGs and the pledge to ‘leave no-one behind”. She acknowledged that “there are different views on aspects of our Strategic Plan. We have heard your voices. While the Plan is not an inter-governmentally negotiated document, in its implementation we will continue our long-standing practice of agreeing on priorities with national governments, while always speaking out for the rights and wellbeing of children everywhere.  I know you will all gather behind this Plan as it is carried out across our offices worldwide”. (@OnuItalia)