The 1960s: Decade of Development

In January 1961, the United Nations resolved that the decade of the 1960s would be the decade of
Development. President Kennedy launched the Decade at the UN in New York. Earlier, in his inaugural
address as President, he had signalled as new sense of purpose in international affairs. He declared: “To
those peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we
pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves.”

The rapidly decolonizing world thus embarked on a new age of partnership. In this view, to have one
part of humanity live well while the other lived in penury was morally unacceptable. But there were also
strategic considerations. In the ideological confrontation between east and west, the promise of poverty
alleviation was weapon to be deployed in the building of alliances.

As new countries rushed to freedom, no fewer than 17 former colonies in

Africa climate was one excitement and hope. The new links being forged within the community of
nations seems to open up a new era of international peace and prosperity. The countries of the third
world having cast off their colonial status, now also needed to cast off their poverty. But for this they
needed aid in the form of funds and know-how from their richer neighbours. Thus was born the push for
the development, a concept which along with more conventional notions of economic investment also
embraced a degree of moral and humanitarian fervour.

During the late 1950s, the United Nations had begun to adapt its institutions tot ake on the
development challenge. It already had technical expertise within its specialized agencies but it also
needed a mechanism to channel financial resources. In 1957, therefore, its established a special fund to
support the growth of infrastructure and industrialization. This was later to be transformed as the
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). At first, UNICEF with its modest humanitarian
programme did not appear to belong the new development club. But no organization in the UN
community could remain immune to the new currents of thinking. During the early 1960s, UNICEF tried
to absorb the torrent of ideas and chart its own path within them. This quest was essentially guided by
Dick Heyward, UNICEF’s senior deputy Executive Director and intellectual powerhouse from 1949 to
1981. In the process, UNICEF underwent the third important transformation in its history.

The turning point was a special survey into the needs of children. This survey, initiated by UNICEF In
1960, took a year to complete and was accompanied by state of the art reports from the specialized
agencies. These included: WHO, for the health needs of children; the Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) and (WHO), for the nutritional needs of children, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, ad
Cultural Organization (UNESCO), for the educational needs of children. The UN Bureau of Social needs of
Social Affairs, for the social welfare needs of children and the International Labour Organization (ILO),
for the work and livelihood needs of children. The final report, Children of the Developing Countries,
represented a watershed in nation’s outlook on how to help their most vulnerable citizens.

The report interwove social and economic strands concerning children’s well-being in a fresh and
innovative way and presented a theory of development that underlined the importance of satisfying
human needs during various phases of childhood and pre-adulthood. In particular, it argues that
children’s needs should be built into national development plans. Children should not be treated as if
they were the orphans of the development process or merely its accidental baggage, they should be a
focus of all policies directed at building up a country’s human capital. Just as over the course of the 20 th
century, the motto children’s first had gained currency during times of war and sudden catastrophe, so a
new version of the same motto had been articulated in the context of development.

This had major implications for the programmes UNICEF supported. They could no longer be confined to
those run by sun-departments of Ministries of Health and Social Welfare. If children were a country’s
most precious resource, then their interests were not merely something to be addresses at times of
distress. Rather, their well-being should be a specific target of investment and indeed of the whole
development should be a specific target of investment and indeed of the whole development effort. The
situation of children would have to be discussed within Ministries of National Planning, no less. And
because children’s concerns would have to be contemplated by research institutes and within national
surveying and planning exercises, these were all activities that UNICEF would henceforth be willing to
support. The importance UNICEF attached to planning for children was confirms in its special 1962
declaration of policy for the Development Decade, endorsed that year by the UN General Assembly.

The other Major change was to abandon the compartmentalization of children’s needs. I the future,
UNICEF would consider the needs of the children along with those of their parents and nurtures, and
would take into account the whole child. Instead of treating the child as a set of parts of which the only
ones of concern were those related to physical well-being, UNICEF should be willing to address the
child’s broader needs. The immediate outcome was a change of policy whereby UNICEF for the first time
and to the satisfaction of the countries of the developing world was willing to provide funds for formal
and non-formal education.

Like many other members of the international humanitarian community, UNICEF set out over the next
few years to show that the fields in which it was engaged lay at the heart of development. These were
traditional arenas such a s food and nutrition, and maternal and child health care. But they also included
new ones such as education, women’s issues, water supplies and sanitation. In these areas, UNICEF
could provide material assistance in the form of equipment, drugs, vehicles and training stipends. In
every poor environments, technical advice was futile without the wherewithal to put into effect.

Because the humanitarian organizations were essentially field oriented, they learned this lesson faster
than most. Other agencies focusing more on economic development had been relying largely on the
formula of technical advice and cheap credit. This was a woefully inadequate response to poverty and its
complex web of political, social, cultural and economic dimensions.

The humanitarian agencies, on the other hands wanted ordinary families to receive tangible benefits