GENEVA, DEC 4: The United Nations Children's Fund said on Monday that it needed at least $207 million in 2001 to protect and educate the world's most vulnerable children.Launching the appeal, UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy told a news conference that the money would help to protect children in crisis zones such as the Great Lakes Region in Africa and in Indonesia from disease, starvation and exploitation.The cash would be spent on immunisation, basic schooling, AIDS education and mine awareness, providing clean water and proper sanitation, and protection from abuse and exploitation including the recruitment of child soldiers.Bellamy said that the appeal targeted Kenya, where 80,000 children were in immediate danger from drought, and Sierra Leone, where only one third of the population can get safe water.Among the 19 crisis areas are also North Korea, the communist bastion which is gradually opening up to the rest of the world, and civil war-torn countries such as Eritrea and Somalia, and drought-ravaged Afghanistan.Bellamy called on political leaders to ensure humanitarian workers had unrestricted and safe access to the children in the areas targeted, citing successful inoculations in war zones such as Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan.The UNICEF appeal is part of a $2.3 billion call for cash for all U N humanitarian agencies for 2001, with just under one-sixth earmarked for U N-administered Kosovo.
