UNICEF representative at Davos urges private sector to adopt child-centered approach

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Updated 19 January 2024
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UNICEF representative at Davos urges private sector to adopt child-centered approach

  • UNICEF’s engagement with the private sector is not a transactional relationship but an approach that seeks to be transformational, Carla Haddad Mardini tells Arab News

DAVOS: Carla Haddad Mardini, director of UNICEF’s private fundraising and partnerships division, has highlighted the importance of integrating “a child-sensitive lens” in all aspects of the private sector’s work.

In an interview with Arab News at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Haddad Mardini said that children’s rights must be at the core of everything the private sector does — from supply chains and decision-making to policies and boards.

“Otherwise, we are failing the next generation,” she said.

The UNICEF’s child-centered approach is a holistic strategy designed to positively impact every stage of a child’s growth and development, spanning infancy to adulthood.

Describing UNICEF’s engagement with the private sector as “advanced,” Haddad Mardini said: “It is not a transactional relationship where we ask for funding to fund that project or that initiative. It is an approach that wants or seeks to be transformational.”

Through this approach, she said, UNICEF seeks global shared value partnerships.




Carla Haddad Mardini,

The UNICEF expert urged the private sector “not only to approach us from a corporate social responsibility lens or from emergency funding.

“We need the private sector, and we do vet our partners very carefully,” she said. “We need them to step up and really leverage their core expertise, their core business, to align with us, and to really scale.”

Haddad Mardini said that the private sector’s efforts are especially instrumental to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, adding that the UINCEF devotes considerable attention to SDG 17.

The United Nations SDG 17 seeks to leverage effective public, public-private and civil society partnerships for sustainable development.

“We work a lot at the intersection of the private sector and the public sector because this is where magic happens,” she said.

Elaborating on the importance of harnessing the strengths of the public and private sectors to bring their assets to bear and scale some of the transformational global initiatives, Haddad Mardini said that global challenges are immense.

“No one institution can tackle them alone, no government can tackle them alone, and no private sector entity can tackle them,” she said. “And it’s really this coordinated, intentional approach to collaboration that is needed.

“It’s painful at times because you have different languages. And now we have the common grammar, which is the SDGs and agenda 2030, and everything we’re trying to do together in the different COPs.”

The UN’s 2030 Agenda provides an action plan for countries, the UN system and other actors to protect the planet and human rights, end poverty, achieve equality and justice, and establish the rule of law.

Haddad Mardini said that private sector efforts have been “stepped up massively,” especially post pandemic.

Citing the COP28 and WEF panels she attended, Haddad Mardini also noted that private sector engagement has become central at the CEO level and in core business, “not just on the periphery.

“So, the momentum is here; there is readiness, and we need to find ways that the private sector, the public sector, and multilateral agencies have a common grammar and scale,” she said.

The UNICEF representative said that despite all the advocacy and the work on the ground, the needs are immense, especially across the Middle East, the Arab region and Africa.

“When we think of Sudan and the silent emergency that no one is talking about… our big challenge is the protractedness of these armed conflicts,” she said. “They last, on average, 30 years.”

Citing the prolonged conflicts in Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan, Haddad Mardini said that the lack of progress was “very worrying.”

She stressed that UNICEF’s first appeal is for “political solutions to these conflicts.

“This is not in our hands,” she said. “We’re a humanitarian development agency; we will do our best, but there needs to be resolution of these armed conflicts.

“In the meantime, we need to save lives in humanitarian emergencies, and make sure we fight multi-dimensional poverty in countries that are on the development trajectory.”

Haddad Mardini said that after the pandemic, which “created massive reversals in development,” several mass-scale emergencies took place in 2023. These included the earthquakes in Turkiye, Syria and Morocco, as well as floods in Pakistan, cholera outbreaks in Haiti and, most recently, the onslaught on Palestine’s Gaza Strip.

In the absence of collaboration and a political resolution, she added, it is “very difficult to really make a change,” especially due to “the compounding effects of all this, and the fact that it is such complex, multi-faceted emergencies that drag on.”

She also said that the aid currently provided in Gaza “is a drop in the ocean” of needs.

Expressing deep concern over the state of children in Gaza and Sudan, Haddad Mardini demanded that humanitarian aid be promptly allowed into these embattled areas.

“These are very complex political situations, and it is a moral imperative for the international community to find a solution,” she said.

In November, UN chief Antonio Guterres described Gaza as “a graveyard for children.”

Since Oct. 7, Israeli airstrikes and ground operations in Gaza have killed at least 10,000 children, according to the Palestinian enclave’s ministry of health. Thousands more remain missing, presumed trapped and buried under rubble, Save the Children said.

In Sudan, more than 435 children were killed in the clashes between the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese Armed Forces. In September last year, UNICEF expressed fears that children in Sudan were “entering a period of unprecedented mortality” due to the devastation of lifesaving services in the country.

Haddad Mardini said: “Every single death across the region is one too many. Every child separated, every child killed, maimed, injured is one too many.

“We hope that there will be a ceasefire and that humanitarian aid can trickle in faster.”

Nevertheless, she believes the potential for collaboration across multilateral organizations, NGOs on the ground, and both the private and public sectors creates optimism for the future.

“I think we need to keep optimistic, but we need to challenge each other to accelerate the response,” she said.

“We need to also make sure that humanitarian aid is depoliticized because we have an impartial approach, and we need to help every child everywhere, depending on their needs.”

Stressing the need to address every emergency, Haddad Mardini said that some emergencies receive great funding from donors while others get “completely forgotten.”

She said: “The same applies to the media. Some emergencies make it to the headlines, and everyone is focused on them and obsessing about them, and others are completely silenced or forgotten and neglected … and funding does not go there.”

On behalf of her organization, the UNICEF representative called for “unearmarked, flexible funding, so we can channel the funding where the needs are greatest and where you have the most vulnerable children so that we have an equitable approach to that.

“It is about every child,” she said. “And in that sense, it is a complex situation right now.”

 


Thousands set up street blockades in Serbia after arrests of anti-government protesters

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Thousands set up street blockades in Serbia after arrests of anti-government protesters

  • Tens of thousands of people attended the rally held after nearly eight months of persistent dissent that has rattled populist President Aleksandar Vucic

BELGRADE, Serbia: Thousands of people Sunday set up street blockades in Serbia, angry over the arrest of anti-government protesters who clashed with police at a massive rally a day earlier demanding early elections.
Protesters put up metal fences and garbage containers at various locations in the capital Belgrade, also blocking a key bridge over the Sava river. Protesters in the northern city of Novi Sad pelted the offices of the ruling populist Serbian Progressive Party with eggs.
Serbian media said similar protest blockades were organized in smaller cities in the Balkan country.
Protesters on Sunday demanded that authorities release dozens of university students and other protesters who were jailed for attacking the police or for allegedly plotting to overthrow the government at the rally Saturday in Belgrade.
Tens of thousands of people attended the rally held after nearly eight months of persistent dissent that has rattled populist President Aleksandar Vucic.
Protesters also declared the current populist government “illegitimate” and laid the responsibility for any violence on the government.
Clashes with riot police erupted after the official part of the rally ended. Police used pepper spray, batons and shields while protesters threw rocks, bottles and other objects.
Police said on Sunday that 48 officers were injured while 22 protesters sought medical help. Out of 77 people detained, 38 remained in custody Sunday, most of them facing criminal charges, said Interior Minister Ivica Dacic.
At least eight more people were detained during the day, the prosecutors said.
Vucic earlier Sunday announced the arrests at a press conference, accusing organizers of the rally of inciting violence and attacks on police, urging legal prosecution.
He also criticized “terrorists and those who tried to bring down the state,” singling out University of Belgrade’s head dean, Vladan Djokic, who was among the protesters.
“There will be more arrests,” Vucic said. “Identification of all individuals is underway.”
Anti-government protests started after a renovated rail station canopy collapsed in November, killing 16 people. Many in Serbia blamed the tragedy in the northern city of Novi Sad on corruption-fueled negligence in state infrastructure projects.
Vucic has repeatedly rejected the student demand for an immediate snap vote instead of regular elections planned for 2027.
“Serbia won. You cannot destroy Serbia with violence,” Vucic said Sunday. “They consciously wanted to spur bloodshed. The time of accountability is coming.”
Critics say Vucic has become increasingly authoritarian since coming to power over a decade ago, stifling democratic freedoms while allowing corruption and organized crime to flourish. He has denied this.
Serbia is formally seeking European Union entry, but Vucic’s government has nourished its relations with both Russia and China.


How Democrats in America’s most Jewish city embraced a critic of Israel for New York mayor

Updated 30 June 2025
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How Democrats in America’s most Jewish city embraced a critic of Israel for New York mayor

  • Mamdani’s success reflects the ideological realignment of many American Jews since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel that led to Israel’s invasion of Gaza

NEW YORK: In choosing Zohran Mamdani as their candidate for mayor, Democrats in America’s most Jewish city have nominated an outspoken critic of Israel, alarming some in New York’s Jewish community and signaling a sea change in the priorities of one of the party’s most loyal voting groups.
The 33-year-old democratic socialist’s surprisingly strong performance against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo makes clear that taking a stance against Israel is no longer disqualifying in a Democratic primary. The state Assembly member has declined to support the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state, refused to denounce the term “global intifada” and supports an organized effort to put economic pressure on Israel through boycotts and other tactics.
Yet he excelled in the city with the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, and with the support of many Jewish voters.
Mamdani’s success reflects the ideological realignment of many American Jews since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel that led to Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Many Democratic voters, including Jews, have grown dismayed by Israel’s conduct in the war and are deeply critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That is especially true among younger, more progressive voters, many of whom have rejected the once-broadly accepted notion that anti-Israel sentiment is inherently antisemitic.
For others, Mamdani’s showing has spurred new fears about safety and the waning influence of Jewish voters in a city where anti-Jewish hate crime has surged. Last year, Jews were the target of more than half of the hate crimes in the city.
“Definitely people are concerned,” said Rabbi Shimon Hecht, of Congregation B’nai Jacob in Brooklyn, who said he has heard from congregants in recent days who hope Mamdani will be beaten in the November general election, where he will face Mayor Eric Adams, who is running as an independent, Republican Curtis Sliwa, and possibly Cuomo, if he stays in the race.
“I think like every upsetting election, it’s a wake-up call for people,” Hecht said. “I strongly believe that he will not be elected as our next mayor, but it’s going to take a lot of uniting among the Jewish people and others who are concerned about these issues. We have to unify.”
Veteran New York Democratic political strategist Hank Sheinkopf put it more bluntly, predicting a hasty exodus of religious Jews from the city and a decline in long-standing Jewish influence that would be replicated elsewhere.
“It’s the end of Jewish New York as we know it,” he said, adding: “New York is a petri dish for national Democratic politics. And what happened here is what will likely happen in cities across the country.”
Israel was a key campaign issue
Mamdani’s top Democratic rival, the former governor, had called antisemitism and support for Israel “the most important issue” of the campaign.
Mamdani’s backers repeatedly accused Cuomo of trying to weaponize the issue. Many drew parallels to the way Republican President Donald Trump has cast any criticism of Israel’s actions as antisemitic, claiming Jews who vote for Democrats “hate Israel” and their own religion.
For some Mamdani supporters, the election results signaled a rejection by voters of one of Cuomo’s arguments: that an upstart socialist with pro-Palestinian views posed a threat to New York’s Jewish community.
Many were focused on issues such as affordability in a notoriously expensive city, or flat-out opposed to Cuomo, who was forced to resign in disgrace amid sexual harassment allegations.
Aiyana Leong Knauer, a 35-year-old Brooklyn bartender who is Jewish and backed Mamdani, said the vote represented “New Yorkers, many of them Jewish, saying we care more about having an affordable city than sowing division.”
“Many of us take really deep offense to our history being weaponized against us,” she said. “Jewish people all over the world have well-founded fears for their safety, but Jews in New York are safe overall.”
Others agreed with Mamdani’s views on Israel.
Beth Miller, political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, an anti-Zionist, progressive group that worked on Mamdani’s behalf, said Mamdani “was actually pretty popular among a lot of Jewish voters.”
“That is not in spite of his support for Palestinian rights. That is because of his support for Palestinian rights,” she said. “There has been a massive rupture within the Jewish community and more and more Jews of all generations, but especially younger generations,” she said, now refuse to be tied to what they see as a rogue government committing atrocities against civilians.
Polls show support for Israel has declined since the war began. Overall, a slight majority of Americans now express a “somewhat” or “very” unfavorable opinion of Israel, according to a March Pew Research Center poll, compared with 42 percent in 2022. Democrats’ views are particularly negative, with nearly 70 percent holding an unfavorable opinion versus less than 40 percent of Republicans.
Beyond the mayoral race
Mamdani’s wasn’t the only race where Israel was on voters’ minds.
In Brooklyn, City Councilwoman Shahana Hanif, who represents Park Slope and surrounding areas, drew criticism for her Palestinian advocacy. Some said she had failed to respond forcefully to antisemitic incidents in the district.
Yet Hanif, the first Muslim woman elected to the City Council, easily beat her top challenger, Maya Kornberg, who is Jewish, despite an influx of money from wealthy, pro-Israel groups and donors.
That outcome dismayed Ramon Maislen, a developer who launched Brooklyn BridgeBuilders to oppose Hanif’s reelection and said antisemitism did not seem to resonate with voters.
“We were very disappointed with our neighbors’ response,” he said.
While campaigning against Hanif, he said he was routinely screamed at by residents and accused of supporting genocide.
“I think that those of us in the Jewish community that are attuned to that are cognizant that there’s been some kind of cultural sea change that’s occurring,” he said. “What we’re seeing is a legitimatization of hatred that isn’t happening in any other liberal or progressive space.”
Mamdani’s record and rhetoric
Mamdani has repeatedly pledged to fight antisemitism, including during an appearance on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” where he was grilled on his stance. He was joined on the show by city comptroller and fellow candidate Brad Lander, the city’s highest-ranking Jewish official, who had cross-endorsed him. He has also said he would increase funding for anti-hate crime programming by 800 percent.
But many of his comments have angered Jewish groups and officials, most notably his refusal to disavow the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which has been used as a slogan in recent protests. Many Jews see it as a call to violence against Israeli civilians. In a podcast interview, Mamdani said the phrase captured a “a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights.”
Given another opportunity to condemn the phrase, Mamdani on Sunday told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that it was not his role to police speech and he pledged to be a mayor who “protects Jewish New Yorkers and lives up to that commitment through the work that I do.”
Mamdani also supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which aims to pressure governments, schools and other institutions to boycott Israeli products, divest from companies that support the country, and impose sanctions. The Anti-Defamation League calls it antisemitic and part of a broader campaign to “delegitimize and isolate the State of Israel.”
Mamdani has also said that, as mayor, he would arrest Netanyahu if the Israeli leader tried to enter the city.
The ADL in a statement Thursday warned candidates and their supporters not to use “language playing into dangerous antisemitic canards that time and time again have been used to incite hatred and violence against Jews.”
In his victory speech, Mamdani alluded to the criticism he’d received and said he would not abandon his beliefs. But he also said he would “reach further to understand the perspectives of those with whom I disagree and to wrestle deeply with those disagreements.”


Trump blasts ‘communist’ winner of NY Democratic primary

Updated 29 June 2025
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Trump blasts ‘communist’ winner of NY Democratic primary

  • Trump’s White House has repeatedly threatened to curb funding for Democratic-led US cities if they oppose his policies, including cutting off money to so-called sanctuary cities which limit their cooperation with immigration authorities

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump branded the winner of New York City’s mayoral Democratic primary a “pure communist” in remarks that aired Sunday, an epithet the progressive candidate dismissed as political theatrics.
Zohran Mamdani’s shock win last week against a scandal-scarred political heavyweight resonated as a thunderclap within the party, and drew the ire of Trump and his collaborators, who accused Mamdani of being a radical extremist.
The Republican’s aggressive criticism of the self-described democratic socialist is sure to ramp up over the coming months as Trump’s party seeks to push Democrats away from the political center and frame them as too radical to win major US elections.
“He’s pure communist” and a “radical leftist... lunatic,” Trump fumed on Fox News talk show “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.”
“I think it’s very bad for New York,” added Trump, who grew up in the city and built his sprawling real estate business there.
“If he does get in, I’m going to be president and he is going to have to do the right thing (or) they’re not getting any money” from the federal government.
Trump’s White House has repeatedly threatened to curb funding for Democratic-led US cities if they oppose his policies, including cutting off money to so-called sanctuary cities which limit their cooperation with immigration authorities.
Mamdani also took to the talk shows Sunday, asserting he would “absolutely” maintain New York’s status as a sanctuary city so that “New Yorkers can get out of the shadows and into the full life of the city that they belong to.”
Asked directly on NBC’s “Meet the Press” whether he is a communist, Mamdani — a 33-year-old immigrant aiming to become New York’s first Muslim mayor — responded “No, I am not.
“And I have already had to start to get used to the fact that the president will talk about how I look, how I sound, where I’m from, who I am, ultimately because he wants to distract from what I’m fighting for,” Mamdani said.
“I’m fighting for the very working people that he ran a campaign to empower, that he has since then betrayed.”
The Ugandan-born state assemblyman had trailed former governor Andrew Cuomo in polls but surged on a message of lower rents, free daycare and buses, and other populist ideas in the notoriously expensive metropolis.
Although registered Democrats outnumber Republicans three to one in New York, victory for Mamdani in November is not assured.
Current Mayor Eric Adams is a Democrat but is campaigning for re-election as an independent, while Cuomo may also run unaffiliated.

 


US Senate pushes ahead on Trump tax cuts as nonpartisan analysis raises price tag

Updated 29 June 2025
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US Senate pushes ahead on Trump tax cuts as nonpartisan analysis raises price tag

  • The Senate only narrowly advanced the tax-cut, immigration, border and military spending bill in a procedural vote late on Saturday, voting 51-49 to open debate on the 940-page megabill

WASHINGTON: The US Senate version of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax-cut and spending bill will add $3.3 trillion to the nation’s debt, about $800 billion more than the version passed last month by the House of Representatives, a nonpartisan forecaster said on Sunday.
The Congressional Budget Office issued its estimate of the bill’s hit to the $36.2 trillion federal debt as Senate Republicans sought to push the bill forward in a marathon weekend session.
Republicans, who have long voiced concern about growing US deficits and debt, have rejected the CBO’s longstanding methodology to calculate the cost of legislation. But Democrats hope the latest, eye-widening figure could stoke enough anxiety among fiscally-minded conservatives to get them to buck their party, which controls both chambers of Congress.
The Senate only narrowly advanced the tax-cut, immigration, border and military spending bill in a procedural vote late on Saturday, voting 51-49 to open debate on the 940-page megabill.
Trump on social media hailed Saturday’s vote as a “great victory” for his “great, big, beautiful bill.”
In an illustration of the depths of the divide within the Republican Party over the bill, Senator Thom Tillis said he would not seek re-election next year, after Trump threatened to back a primary challenger in retribution for Tillis’ Saturday night vote against the bill.
Tillis’ North Carolina seat is one of the few Republican Senate seats seen as vulnerable in next year’s midterm elections. He was one of just two Republicans to vote no on Saturday.
Trump wants the bill passed before the July 4 Independence Day holiday. While that deadline is one of choice, lawmakers will face a far more serious deadline later this summer when they must raise the nation’s self-imposed debt ceiling or risk a devastating default on $36.2 trillion in debt.
“We are going to make sure hardworking people can keep more of their money,” Senator Katie Britt, an Alabama Republican, told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday.

HITS TO BENEFITS
Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, said this legislation would come to haunt Republicans if it gets approved, predicting 16 million Americans would lose their health insurance.
“Many of my Republican friends know ... they’re walking the plank on this and we’ll see if those who’ve expressed quiet consternation will actually have the courage of their convictions,” Warner told CBS News’ “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”
The legislation has been the sole focus of a marathon weekend congressional session marked by political drama, division and lengthy delays as Democrats seek to slow the legislation’s path to passage.
Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer called for the entire text of the bill to be read on the Senate floor, a process that began before midnight Saturday and ran well into Sunday afternoon. Following that lawmakers will begin up to 20 hours of debate on the legislation. That will be followed by an amendment session, known as a “vote-a-rama,” before the Senate votes on passage. Lawmakers said they hoped to complete work on the bill on Monday.
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, the other Republican “no” vote, opposed the legislation because it would raise the federal borrowing limit by an additional $5 trillion.
“Did Rand Paul Vote ‘NO’ again tonight? What’s wrong with this guy???” Trump said on social media.
The megabill would extend the 2017 tax cuts that were Trump’s main legislative achievement during his first term as president, cut other taxes and boost spending on the military and border security.
Representative Michael McCaul, however, warned that fellow Republicans who do not back Trump on the bill could face payback from voters.
“They know that their jobs are at risk. Not just from the president, but from the voting — the American people. Our base back home will not reelect us to office if we vote no on this,” McCaul also told CBS News.
Senate Republicans, who reject the CBO’s estimates on the cost of the legislation, are set on using an alternative calculation method that does not factor in costs from extending the 2017 tax cuts. Outside tax experts, like Andrew Lautz from the nonpartisan think tank Bipartisan Policy Center, call it a “magic trick.”
Using this calculation method, the Senate Republicans’ budget bill appears to cost substantially less and seems to save $500 billion, according to the BPC analysis.
If the Senate passes the bill, it will then return to the House of Representatives for final passage before Trump can sign it into law. The House passed its version of the bill last month.


Cold baths, climate shelters as Southern Europe heat wave intensifies

Updated 29 June 2025
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Cold baths, climate shelters as Southern Europe heat wave intensifies

  • Peaks of 43 degrees Celsius were expected in areas of southern Spain and Portugal, while nearly all of France is sweltering in heat expected to last for several days

ROME: Authorities across Southern Europe urged people to seek shelter Sunday and protect the most vulnerable as punishing temperatures from Spain to Portugal, Italy and France climbed higher in the summer’s first major heat wave.

Ambulances stood on standby near tourist hotspots and regions issued fire warnings as experts warned that such heat waves, intensified by climate change, would become more frequent.

Peaks of 43 degrees Celsius were expected in areas of southern Spain and Portugal, while nearly all of France is sweltering in heat expected to last for several days.

In Italy, 21 cities were on high alert for extreme heat, including Milan, Naples, Venice, Florence and Rome.

“We were supposed to be visiting the Colosseum, but my mum nearly fainted,” said British tourist Anna Becker, who had traveled to Rome from a “muggy, miserable” Verona.

Hospital emergency departments across Italy have reported an uptick in heatstroke cases, according to Mario Guarino, vice president of the Italian Society of Emergency Medicine.

“We’ve seen around a 10 percent increase, mainly in cities that not only have very high temperatures but also a higher humidity rate. It is mainly elderly people, cancer patients or homeless people, presenting with dehydration, heat stroke, fatigue,” he told AFP.

Hospitals like the Ospedale dei Colli in Naples have set up dedicated heatstroke pathways to speed access to vital treatments like cold water immersion, Guarino said.

In Venice, authorities offered free guided tours for people over 75s in air-conditioned museums and public buildings.