When Natalia Kanem displays on her eight-year tenure on the helm of the UN reproductive well being company, she does not start with world statistics, boardroom breakthroughs, and even recollections of her visits to refugee camps.
She returns, again and again, to a single picture: that of a ten-year-old woman – standing on the sting of adolescence, her future unsure, and her rights nonetheless in grave doubt.
“Will she be capable to keep in class, graduate, and make her means by way of the world?” Dr. Kanem wonders. “Or is she going to be derailed by issues like little one marriage, feminine genital mutilation, or abject poverty?”
That seismic query and that woman – not one little one specifically, however an emblem of the hundreds of thousands worldwide whose future is in danger – have turn out to be the touchstone of Dr. Kanem’s almost eight-year tenure as Government Director of the UN’s sexual and reproductive well being company, formally referred to as the UN Inhabitants Fund (UNFPA).
From her early days engaged on the frontlines in East Africa to overseeing a $1.7 billion company with operations in additional than 150 international locations, Dr. Kanem has shepherded UNFPA by way of world shifts, political headwinds, and ideological pushback.
Most of all, she has led a fierce revolution within the lives of hundreds of thousands of ladies and ladies.
This month, she is stepping down from her submit forward of schedule. “It is time to cross on the baton,” the 70-year-old instructed her workers – a 5,000-strong workforce – in a videotaped tackle earlier this 12 months. “I’ve pledged to do every part in my capability to maintain positioning UNFPA to proceed to do nice issues.”
Roots and ascent
Born in Panama and skilled as a medical physician, Dr. Kanem joined UNFPA in 2014 after a profession in philanthropy. Her choice to serve “the noble goal of the United Nations” first led her to East Africa and Tanzania, the place she was struck by the quiet heroism of discipline workers. “It is actually on the nation stage the place we show our price,” she instructed UN Information.
However the job was not straightforward. In 2017, when she took the reins of the company, Dr. Kanem inherited a corporation grappling with waning visibility, unstable funding, and protracted pushback from conservative viewpoints. Nonetheless, UNFPA grew – not simply in finances, however in stature.
“After I got here, the narrative was, ‘We’re a small group, beleaguered, no person understands what we do,”‘ she stated. “Now, I feel it is clearer.”
That readability got here, partly, from what Dr. Kanem calls “thought management.”
Whether or not difficult misconceptions about fertility or confronting gender-based violence enabled by know-how, she pushed UNFPA to the frontlines of worldwide discourse. “We exist in a market of concepts,” she defined. “And we now have to inform the reality in a means that is compelling sufficient so we are able to garner the allies this motion requires.”
Below her management, the company skilled tons of of 1000’s of midwives, distributed billions of contraceptives, and expanded humanitarian operations to achieve ladies and ladies in probably the most fragile settings – from the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar to war-scarred Ukraine and cholera-stricken Haiti.
UNFPA’s presence in disaster zones was not solely logistical, however symbolic. In Sudan, Syria, and Gaza, a easy tent stocked with menstrual pads, a blanket, and a bar of cleaning soap might function sanctuary. “It represents the respite {that a} girl wants in a time of disaster,” she stated. “You realize, we name our kits ‘dignity kits’ for that cause.”
Shifting the dialog
Past delivering companies, Dr. Kanem elevated UNFPA’s position as a thought chief in a polarised world. She steered the company into tough public conversations – about teen being pregnant, local weather nervousness, fertility charges, and on-line harassment – with an unflinching insistence on rights.
“The ten-year-old woman exists,” she stated. “What her dad and mom and her non secular leaders and her neighborhood assume is significant for her to be effectively ready, for her to know what to do when she’s challenged by coercive practices.”
That management prolonged to information. Below Dr. Kanem, UNFPA invested closely in supporting nationwide censuses and constructing dashboards to assist lawmakers form reproductive well being coverage with real-time perception.
This 12 months’s State of World Inhabitants report, the company’s annual deep dive into demographic traits, reframed standard narratives round so-called “inhabitants collapse” – noting that many ladies and men delay having kids not out of ideology, however as a result of they can not afford to boost them.
Dr. Kanem praised the altruism of younger individuals who say they’re selecting to not have kids for concern of worsening the local weather disaster. However that is not what the info reveals.
“The world substitute fertility charge will not be endangering the planet,” she defined. “The information actually say: you may have as many kids as you may afford.”
A rights-based compass in turbulent instances
Dr. Kanem’s tenure coincided with mounting assaults on reproductive rights, rising nationalism, and rising scepticism of multilateral establishments. She confronted years of US funding cuts – together with below the present administration – at the same time as demand for UNFPA’s companies surged.
“UNFPA has more cash than we have ever had,” she famous. “But it surely’s by no means going to be sufficient to cease the circulation of want.”
Sources alone will not safe the company’s future – credibility and persistence are simply as important. “The multilateral system itself has come below query at a time when it’s wanted now greater than ever,” she warned. “We do must show ourselves each day. And after we make errors, we have got to rise up and rectify them and discover companions who’re going to be allies.”
One such associate has been the personal sector. In 2023, UNFPA teamed up with tech corporations to launch a growth impression bond in Kenya, delivering mobile-based sexual well being companies to stop teenage being pregnant and new HIV infections amongst adolescent ladies.
Altering mindsets
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UNFPA has lengthy labored to finish dangerous practices comparable to feminine genital mutilation (FGM) and little one marriage. Below Dr. Kanem, that work turned as a lot about shifting mindsets as altering legal guidelines.
“Sure, completely,” she stated when requested if progress was actual. “It has been essential to see non secular leaders and conventional leaders standing towards sure practices… and to work with faculty programs in order that the ladies themselves will perceive the dangers and be capable to take higher selections about their choices.”
The _HREF=https://www.un.org/coronavirus“>COVID-19 pandemic, she admitted, was a setback. With colleges closed, some communities elevated the variety of weddings and FGM ceremonies. However in lots of international locations – together with populous Indonesia – UNFPA has seen the apply decline, partly due to youth advocates talking out from inside their very own communities.
New technology, subsequent chapter
Trying forward, Dr. Kanem did not dwell on uncertainty. She spoke as a substitute of risk. “We have remodeled ourselves, modernized ourselves,” she stated. “There’s simply limitless risk for UNFPA.”
Her personal future contains what she calls a “mini-sabbatical” – extra time for music, her household, and, lastly, herself. However she will not keep silent for lengthy. “I do know that my ardour for points of ladies and ladies will not be going to recede,” she stated. “It has been a labour of affection.”
Her parting thought? One remaining return to the woman on the centre of all of it.
“When that 10-year-old woman succeeds, everybody succeeds,” she stated. “It’s a higher world.”
