She returns, time and again, to a single picture: that of a ten-year-old lady – 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 via the world?” Dr. Kanem wonders. “Or is she going to be derailed by issues like youngster marriage, feminine genital mutilation, or abject poverty?”
That seismic query and that lady – not one youngster particularly, however an emblem of the hundreds of thousands worldwide whose future is in danger – have turn into the touchstone of Dr. Kanem’s almost eight-year tenure as Government Director of the UN’s sexual and reproductive well being company, formally often called 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 via international shifts, political headwinds, and ideological pushback.
Most of all, she has led a fierce revolution within the lives of hundreds of thousands of girls and women.
This month, she is stepping down from her put up forward of schedule. “It’s time to go on the baton,” the 70-year-old instructed her workers – a 5,000-strong workforce – in a videotaped deal with earlier this 12 months. “I’ve pledged to do the whole lot in my capability to maintain positioning UNFPA to proceed to do nice issues.”
UNFPA Government Director Natalia Kanem (centre) visits the Mamas Market in Port Vila, Vanuatu.
Roots and ascent
Born in Panama and educated 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 subject workers. “It’s actually on the nation stage the place we show our value,” she instructed A information.
However the job was not simple. 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 funds, however in stature.
“After I got here, the narrative was, ‘We’re a small group, beleaguered, no one understands what we do,’” she mentioned. “Now, I believe it’s clearer.”
That readability got here, partially, 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’s compelling sufficient so we will garner the allies this motion requires.”
Underneath her management, the company educated a whole lot of 1000’s of midwives, distributed billions of contraceptives, and expanded humanitarian operations to succeed in ladies and women in essentially 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 may function sanctuary. “It represents the respite {that a} lady wants in a time of disaster,” she mentioned. “You already know, we name our kits ‘dignity kits’ for that cause.”
UNFPA Government Director, Natalia Kanem (proper), visits Sudan in March 2021.
Shifting the dialog
Past delivering providers, Dr. Kanem elevated UNFPA’s position as a thought chief in a polarised world. She steered the company into troublesome public conversations – about teen being pregnant, local weather anxiousness, fertility charges, and on-line harassment – with an unflinching insistence on rights.
“The ten-year-old lady exists,” she mentioned. “What her mother and father 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 knowledge. Underneath 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 developments, reframed standard narratives round so-called “inhabitants collapse” – noting that many men and women delay having kids not out of ideology, however as a result of they can not afford to lift them.
Dr. Kanem praised the altruism of younger individuals who say they’re selecting to not have kids for worry of worsening the local weather disaster. However that’s not what the info reveals.
“The world alternative fertility charge is just not endangering the planet,” she defined. “The info actually say: you’ll be able to have as many kids as you’ll be able to 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 underneath the present administration – at the same time as demand for UNFPA’s providers surged.
“UNFPA has extra money than we’ve ever had,” she famous. “However it’s by no means going to be sufficient to cease the circulation of want.”
Assets alone received’t safe the company’s future – credibility and persistence are simply as important. “The multilateral system itself has come underneath query at a time when it’s wanted now greater than ever,” she warned. “We do need to show ourselves every day. And once we make errors, we’ve bought to stand up and rectify them and discover companions who’re going to be allies.”
One such accomplice has been the non-public sector. In 2023, UNFPA teamed up with tech companies to launch a improvement influence bond in Kenya, delivering mobile-based sexual well being providers to stop teenage being pregnant and new HIV infections amongst adolescent women.
Dr. Natalia Kanem, head of the United Nations Inhabitants Fund (left) talks to UN Information and Media Deputy Director Mita Hosali.
Altering mindsets
UNFPA has lengthy labored to finish dangerous practices resembling feminine genital mutilation (FGM) and youngster marriage. Underneath Dr. Kanem, that work grew to become as a lot about shifting mindsets as altering legal guidelines.
“Sure, completely,” she mentioned when requested if progress was actual. “It’s been crucial to see non secular leaders and conventional leaders standing towards sure practices… and to work with college methods in order that the ladies themselves will perceive the dangers and be capable to take higher choices about their choices.”
The COVID-19 pandemic, she admitted, was a setback. With faculties 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, partially because of youth advocates talking out from inside their very own communities.
New era, subsequent chapter
Wanting forward, Dr. Kanem didn’t dwell on uncertainty. She spoke as a substitute of chance. “We’ve reworked ourselves, modernized ourselves,” she mentioned. “There’s simply limitless chance for UNFPA.”
Her personal future consists of what she calls a “mini-sabbatical” – extra time for music, her household, and, lastly, herself. However she received’t keep silent for lengthy. “I do know that my ardour for points of girls and women is just not going to recede,” she mentioned. “It’s been a labour of affection.”
Her parting thought? One ultimate return to the lady on the centre of all of it.
“When that 10-year-old lady succeeds, everybody succeeds,” she mentioned. “It’s a higher world.”
