By Mike Lecaroz ’08
Business Editor

Carol Bellamy, former Executive Director of the United Nations’ Children’s Fund (UNICEF) spoke to a large crowd of mostly undergraduates Monday night in the auditorium of the Harrison Institute/Small Library. Bellamy, whose talk focused on efforts to save the ten million children under the age of five who die each year from preventable causes, began her career as a corporate law associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore.

Her lecture was presented by UNICEF-UVA and was titled “The State of the World’s Children.” It focused on how perilous that state is for so many children around the world.

“If the entire population of Michigan died next year someone would take notice, and if three-fourths died from preventable diseases, people would notice,” Bellamy said, but noted that we see “not a ripple” with respect to the 10 million deaths of children under five from such preventable causes as measles, malaria, and malnutrition.

Bellamy spent her tenure at UNICEF fighting to bring that issue to the world stage. She was appointed director by Boutros Boutros-Ghali in 1995 and granted a second five-term term by Kofi Annan in 2000. Throughout her tenure, she worked to bring issues of child exploitation to the world stage.

Bellamy pointed to a host of other statistics to make her point. Two billion out of the world’s six billion people live off less than $2 a day. In the United States, one out of every fourth child is born below the poverty line. In terms of the HIV/AIDS “global pandemic,” one in six deaths is a child. In regards to war, Bellamy pointed out that the majority of casualties are civilian women and children.

While there is no silver bullet for solving these problems, Bellamy said that education comes close.

“If you want to make an investment and get a return, it’s in education for girls.”

Women who had received basic and secondary education were less likely to be victims of violence, less likely to contract HIV/AIDS and more likely to have children who live past five years old.

Bellamy said that there has been a significant improvement in providing access to clean water, which has led to a one-third reduction in deaths from dehydration caused by diarrhea. But that progress has not been matched by access to improved sanitation. She said the biggest obstacle to improving sanitation around the world is plastic waste.

“I’m sorry Mrs. Robinson, but plastic doesn’t go away,” she said.

After speaking for 45 minutes, Bellamy took questions which ranged from the importance of environmental justice in protecting the world’s children to how Bellamy ended up in law school.

“The reason I went to law school is because I thought I’d work for USDA, [but] my favorite courses were Corporations and Contracts.” Bellamy spoke proudly of her business experience in both the public and private sector. In addition to working for Cravath, she was the first female president of the New York City Council and worked at Bear Stearns & Co. and Morgan Stanley.

Having worked in law, New York City politics, and investment banking, Bellamy joked, “I just need to have done real estate and I would have been in every sleazy profession.”

Bellamy is currently CEO and President of World Learning, which is one of the largest global education endeavors in the world and provides for study abroad programs to many of the less traveled areas: the Americas, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

She said on moving from the public to the private sector, “you probably have to prove yourself more, that’s the bad news. The good news is that the expectations are lower, so if you perform, and you have to perform, you’re brilliant.” She also urged private practitioners sitting on public boards not to go “soft” when they get there because non-profits need aggressive fundraising and decisive management.

Even after the formal question and answer session ended, Bellamy spoke informally with the students who had questions about global public interest career opportunities after graduation. But one student criticized Bellamy for failing to address the marketing of tobacco to children in developing areas during her tenure as UNICEF director.

“You make choices,” Bellamy answered, saying that she believed promoting education would make a bigger impact across multiple areas.

Overall, she said Americans need to know more about the world. “Our global knowledge is not as great as it could be.”

UNICEF-UVA is a four-year-old student group whose mission is advocacy for children and fundraising for the U.S. Fund for UNICEF. The group sponsors Trick or Treat for UNICEF and is currently planning a soccer tournament for next fall. They will also soon be presenting a new film series on world hunger and UN peacekeeping efforts.