International Chamber of Commerce Global joins hands with UNICEF

The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and UNICEF have issued a call for enhanced cooperation between the public and private sectors to strengthen the response to COVID-19 and enable a resilient and sustainable rebuild from the pandemic.

Entitled ‘Reimagining the World We Need’, the joint statement leverages the organisations’ respective expertise in the fields of business and children’s rights to set out a common vision to address the economic, health, and societal consequences of COVID-19. 

To this end, ICC and UNICEF have identified eight concrete areas where enhanced public-private collaboration can ensure a fairer, healthier, and more prosperous world for all. The call to action responds to growing concerns about the accelerated spread of the virus in several regions and the economic fallout from the pandemic – which, absent of effective interventions, is expected to lead to widespread business foreclosures and an estimated 86 million children falling into poverty this year.

In this context, the recommendations include a call for the immediate elimination of tariff and export curbs on all goods required to mitigate the spread of the pandemic – with the two organisations emphasising the imperative to ensure that COVID-19 diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines are made available for everyone, everywhere. 

The call to action also outlines other opportunities for greater public-private sector collaboration, including: the scaling-up of family-friendly workplace policies; developing stimulus measures which channel support into the real economy; bolstering mental health and social protection services; expanding job readiness programs; and reimagining schooling to enable continued learning opportunities for all children.  ICC Sri Lanka Chairman Dinesh Weerakkody said the chamber is fully committed to supporting the implementation of the recommendations laid out by the ICC-UNICEF joint communique.