Diaries

As dawn breaks over Darfur, my return after two decades feels heavy. Many millions are suffering once again. Twenty years ago, I was part of the humanitarian effort to make a difference. That was in the early 2000s, when celebrities and world-famous journalists would make the trek in a well-intentioned effort to focus attention on the atrocities…

I wasn’t ready for the devastation I saw in the Gaza Strip when I was there a few months ago. I wrote then that in my 20 years with UNICEF I’d never seen anything quite like it, as panicked families fled one bombardment after another. The desperation of families constantly on the move – families who already had nothing – was palpable. Somehow,…

Afghanistan has mostly disappeared from the global news cycle, but the hardship faced by its people, especially children, has worsened over the last two years.   I wanted to see the situation for myself, and how our colleagues have adjusted their efforts under the new circumstances. For a week I travelled the breadth of Afghanistan, from Herat in…, Herat: After the earthquakes , Inside the tent, it’s so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Fifteen adolescent girls watch me expectantly. It’s been a while since I’ve spoken Farsi – a language readily understood by the Dari speakers of Western Afghanistan. I pause, then try again. This time they understand me, and their laughter lights up the place.  The tent we sit in is a…, Torkham border: Families returning from Pakistan , Baby Kolsum pulls a face when I drop the polio vaccine in his mouth. The fight against polio was where my UNICEF career began, and my heart was set on successfully vaccinating one of the kids returning from Pakistan at the Torkham border crossing today.   I ask for another try. A second baby boy, Shabir, his tiny body swaddled in warm blankets, is…, Daikundi: Supporting communities on health, nutrition and education , Daikundi Province is perched among the jagged peaks of Afghanistan’s central highlands. Buffeted by crosswinds, the little Kodiak plane comes in to land on a flat piece of land the length of two football pitches.   We drive deeper into the mountains, past mud-bricked villages, women shouldering bundles of firewood, and boys herding shaggy goats.…

Nothing could prepare me for my recently concluded mission into the Gaza Strip, where children face catastrophic conditions. In my twenty years with UNICEF, traveling from one humanitarian crisis to the next – from famines to floods and war zones to refugee camps – I’ve simply never seen such devastation and despair as is happening in Gaza. The…

As soon as you meet 17-year-old Francis*, you know his childhood hasn’t been one that anyone deserves. He struggles to make eye contact while we’re talking, and his expression remains mostly blank. When he says he was only six when it all started, I immediately think of my own six-year-old son. It makes it even harder to hear what Francis has been…

The needs of Afghanistan’s children and families are immense. So are the efforts of those supporting them: teams of community workers made up of family members, teachers in community-based schools, vaccinators, and health workers working around the clock to bring life-saving services in the face of an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe. UNICEF…

Months ago, I had the privilege of meeting a remarkable colleague named Steward Francis. Despite being in different time zones and thousands of miles apart, we connected via video chat. During our conversation, I was in awe as Steward shared his incredible journey from Yambio, South Sudan, to his current position as an education specialist with…

During COP26 in 2021, I remember seeing photos of thousands of youth climate activists outside the conference in Glasgow. Seeing young people like me mobilise to protect our planet was astonishing and inspired me. I was born in Maharashtra, the second most populous state in India, with a population of 118 million people. The state of Maharashtra…

I think about myself at age 10 as I write this, without the words to articulate my new understandings of who I was. I think of who I am and who I was as plural because my queerness was and is not a monolith; it is an amalgamation of multiple shifting identities I hold within me and those that manifest in how I engage with the world around me. This…

The first evening I was put into hospital, when I was 13, I knew I was no longer a child like any other. Upon admission, that day, I had been placed in the general paediatric ward because the child psychiatry unit was full. My father was by my side. But two hours before the end of visiting times, a nurse ordered him to leave: Different rules…

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit Indonesia in 2020, the medically recommended and socially acceptable thing to do was to stay at home and flatten the curve of infection rates. But not everyone had that privilege. Many of us had to continue working outside our homes to pay our bills and put food on the table. This was especially true for Indonesia’s…

Suddenly finding yourself in a new environment with a different culture, not being able to cope with new lessons, failing exams one after the other, and seeking help from drugs. This was the state my friend found himself in when he called me at 2 a.m., disappointed, empty of hope and his voice trembling; this call was his last step before self-…