Anthony Lake talks to Antonio Mora

Antonio Mora: Your office has put out a really frightening report about what's going on Syria and Iraq and that region in general. You said 14 million kids have been affected by that conflict. That is the population of New York, Chicago and Los Angeles roughly, all put together. It's a massive problem?

Anthony Lake: It is. It's a huge problem. And over 5 million of them are inside Syria, another 2 million live in refugee camps or in-house communities outside Syria. And we forget about these probably over 3.5 million kids are living in the communities in surrounding countries that are having to try to take care of the Syrian kids. And that means they're suffering hardships also. And then we have over 2.5 million kids in Iraq now. And these numbers are growing very rapidly.

Just across the board, the biggest problem, at least numerically, is with the kids who have remained inside Syria, many of whom are displaced, many of whom are facing war constantly — as you said, 5.6 million?

Yes, and very hard to reach. And so we have to struggle to reach them when they're in the government-controlled areas, and then we have to try to try to get across to reach them. So we work with the government to try to get them to be as helpful as they can. And of course, it's not UNICEF kids or young UNICEF people in T-shirts going out and doing this. But we work through partners to do this, local NGOs, the Red Cross Society in Syria, etc. So it's an immensely complex operation also.

And as you said, 2 million have become refugees in nearby countries. And some of them in just tents at tent camps, with all sorts of challenges, especially the very harsh winter this year.

Yes, or during the rainy periods, flooding in some of the valley areas. But I want to emphasize something. We just use numbers — 2 million, 5.5 million, etc., etc. Every one of those numbers is an individual child. And they are children like my grandchildren, who play and laugh and cry and misbehave and all of that. But these kids are losing their childhoods. And they're facing problems that are not only affecting them now in horrible ways. And you've seen it on television. I visited in Lebanon and in Syria and Jordan and Iraq — how these kids are trying to survive. But it's affecting their future. And if it's affecting the kids' futures, then it's affecting their countries' futures. And that means all of us too, because we have such interests in that area.

It just creates a massive multiplier effect that you said also affects the kids in the neighboring countries because all these refugees are taking resources away from them. What do you see as the consequences of such an enormous displacement and refugee problem?

Well, let's talk about it in terms of the kids themselves. And imagine that you're a 5-year-old kid who is either in Syria now in a hard-to-reach area or living, as you mentioned, in a tent, literally, just a tent, and the winters get very cold in the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon and in Jordan and elsewhere. That 5-year-old kid has never known anything except for conflict and violence and the stress on their families. One of the very interesting aspects of this — and appalling aspects of this — is that we're learning more and more in scientific studies of how this affects the kid's brain for the first few years of a kid's life. Their brain is developing extremely rapidly. And what happens to that kid's brain during those months and years will determine the rest of the kid's future. And if the kid isn't getting the nourishment, if the kid isn't getting the stimulation so that the brain is getting ideas and is playing, you know, from the kid playing or learning or whatever. And violence releases chemicals in the brain of toxic stress that prevents the child's brain from developing also. So literally, their future is being affected by a loss of cognitive capacity for the rest of their lives. And that means their societies are losing all of that also.

You said specifically once that for the youngest children, this crisis, as you've just told us, is all they've ever known. This generation of young people is still in danger of being lost to the cycle of violence, replicating in the next generation what they suffered in their own. How do you stop that cycle?

Of course, you do [what] you can. And we are focusing on two things for a campaign that we and a number of governments and NGOs and others have started, called No Lost Generation, to try to prevent this. The reason we're doing it is precisely because not only are these children suffering now but if they grow up believing that this kind of violence is normal, because it's all they know, then they are going to grow up with hatred in their hearts. They're going to grow up believing that it's right to shoot Sunnis or Shia. They're going to grow up believing that barrel bombs are somehow normal. And they're going to replicate it again later. So you address it. And let me show you some pictures and read you a poem. Usually, when I travel and meet kids during disasters, they are so hopeful. They're still in the midst of a flood or whatever — they're laughing, they're playing, they're finding ways to be kids. Here in the refugee camps that I visited in Jordan and then in the Beqaa Valley, you still see that. And their hope should inspire us to go on working hard and being hopeful, but so many of them are starting not to be.

I was in a tent school that we are running in the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon a year ago. And all the kids, I said, "So what do you do for play?" And they said, "Well, one of the things is that Marwan," and they all pointed to this little boy, who's 12 years old, "writes poetry that we love." And so I thought, "Great, show me some poetry." And just one short poem translated, "Death don't come near me, not out of fear of my lost time but fear of my mother shedding tears." My kids are playing baseball, and Marwan is writing poems like this.

Now the effect of this, again, is they are losing education, which means they won't have the skills to contribute to their societies in the future. And in their hearts, hatred. So we have for example reached about a million kids now across the region with psychological counseling to try to get them over the trauma. And we are emphasizing education, education, education within Syria, where we've supplied millions of school supplies to kids across the country.

Or in helping the wonderfully generous in their support, countries — Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq — who are then trying to deal with the educational needs of these kids, including especially because you can't get them all into the schools that are already hugely overburdened, so a lot of informal education as well.

And you've also put out a massive effort to help with medical needs, which are tremendous.

One out of five hospitals in Syria are not open or really not functional. We are carrying out massive vaccinations campaigns in every way we can. Again, it's very hard because it's not only in the government-controlled areas but probably a third or more of what we're doing is across the lines, either across the lines from the government-controlled areas or across the borders, now that Security Council resolutions have authorized it, into rebel-held areas. It's dangerous work. 

And the abuse these children suffer from is on so many different levels. Just absolute horrors, and we're seeing it in Iraq with what ISIL has done to the Yazidi, children being forced into suicide bombings. It's on every imaginable level?

Oh, it is. And it is among almost every group involved in this. There have been atrocities committed by all sides, including literally selling children. I've seen on the Internet a list of the prices that they get when they sell children and women —outrageous — and a child bringing the most of all, because I don't know why. But it's appalling and outrageous. 

Little girls forced into marriage and used as sexual slaves?

Children being taken in as child soldiers. They are. But of course, in other areas of the world as well, which we work very hard on. I was in Homs a year ago in Syria and met with some families who had just gotten out from a besieged area. And the stories those children were telling of not being able to walk on the streets because of snipers. So they were going through underground tunnels to pop out then in abandoned houses to look for any canned goods that were left over. They were hunting cats to eat. I mean, they were barely surviving. And again, you can imagine the trauma for these kids. We went across the line then into a rebel-held area in Homs and went to a school, and in the school they were having to study down in the basements because of the snipers that might shoot them if they went upstairs. What does that tell them about what adults are like? What does that tell about what the rest of their lives are going to be like?

The adolescents, the 12-year-olds, the 13-year-olds, 14-year-olds, just at the age when kids are saying — and you hear it, and it's both very heartening and heartbreaking to hear them say that now — that they're thinking seriously about their futures, they want to be doctors, they want to be teachers. And yet they're not getting all the education that they need to do it. So you're so heartened by it that they still have hope. But it's also heartbreaking because you know that so few of them, unless we stop this war now, are going to have those hopes very, very diminished.

UNICEF needs almost $280 million for what it's trying to do in Syria. And you've only gotten a fraction of that. Same thing is happening in Iraq and other affected countries.

Central African Republic, South Sudan, all of these crises. Last year was a terrible year for children as these emergencies were breaking out. 

Yet is the situation worse than it's been at any time since World War II?

I believe so, yes. And if you look at now the map of the world and just imagine for a moment the countries that are in crisis popping up and tell me which one looks like it's going to be better.

Why don't we go down and look at some of those countries. Central African Republic? 

It was horribly neglected during the colonial period, very low education rates, etc. And it has completely fallen apart now between Muslims and Christians. And children are suffering terribly there.

Not that far away, from a lack of education, again, health care, etc. Not that far away, South Sudan, you've got a civil war raging.

And in the last week, peace efforts have fallen apart. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of kids in need of nutrition. I think it's 25,000 children have been taken in as child soldiers into the various armed groups. It's appalling.

Then moving west, you've got what's going on in Nigeria that has spilled over into the other areas. Right, in Cameroon, you've got Boko Haram, whose name is specifically against children and Western education. What can UNICEF do?

There's a very short answer — our best. And that, of course, does, as you said, require resources, human as well as financial. We've actually expanded considerably over the last couple of years. All of our resources we have to raise every year, even though we're a U.N. agency. And we are raising more and more resources but not nearly enough to do all the things.

Why are you so badly underfunded? Because you'd think that the one thing that everybody agrees on in the world is that you want to take care of suffering children.

We're hardwired to care for our children as human beings. I think the problem is, in a way, just a fatigue. People have gotten used to seeing images of children suffering. People have gotten used to more and more conflicts and crises. And we mustn't let that happen. That's diminishing our own humanity as well as stupid strategically, because these children are the children who will decide what the future of our world is going to be. So we'll keep trying.

On a personal note, I wake up in the morning, I read the headlines, I can see no progress almost on any of these political conflicts. And you know there are going to be more, with climate change especially, more natural disasters also. And I say to myself, we are going to go through another day of not being able to do everything we can for the children. And I start to get discouraged. And then I remember in what we all tell each other in UNICEF also and to others, is that even if we can't do 100 percent of what we need to do — and that means children unnecessarily die and having their futures blighted — there is a huge difference between doing 90 percent of what we need to do and doing 80 percent of what we need to do. Because that 10 percent difference is millions of kids' lives. So let's get as close to 100 percent as we can, and if it's 90 percent, if we know we did our best, then that's our best.

And your campaign in a way reflects some of what you've just been saying. Instead of focusing on the negative, on children who are dying or who have died, you're trying to send a more hopeful message?

Well, you see children everywhere who have not given up hope, despite those who are drawing those pictures. And if they haven't given up hope, what possible excuse can we have for giving up hope? And of course, translating that hope into hard work and translating that hard work into results for the children.

Conflict again has been a problem within Ukraine. You have hundreds of thousands of children who are suffering there. You found that the problem is not just in underdeveloped countries, but you've seen it in the richest countries in the world, that well over 2 million kids have fallen into poverty just in the last few years since the recession. And in fact, in the United States itself, that in 34 out of the 50 states, children are in worse shape than they were before.

No, absolutely. And that's not good for any society. And of course, while you were saying that, I was thinking to myself, you don't change human nature by higher economic development. People are still people, so it's natural in any country, there are gonna be these problems. No society is healthy if the inequalities in that society are growing. Politically, it's not as sustainable if some groups are getting more than others. That's a recipe for political difficulties.

But you also highlight that this is not just a rural problem, which is something that people think, but this is also a serious problem in urban areas.

Very much so. And of course, with urbanization in Africa, rapid urbanization, more and more people moving into the cities, if you don't plan for it, then you get these slums that are growing up with no planning at all. And once they've moved in there, it's much harder to provide it than if you have some sort of planned urbanization so that you're providing the sewage systems etc. in those areas, which in turn prevents disease. And when you have more disease, then you have to spend more money on the medical side, and it's just bad planning. So urban planning and urban planning that address climate change is extremely important for the future of the next generation.

One of the most heartbreaking findings — approximately 19,000 children die every single day from causes that we know how to prevent. That's more than 7 million children a year. That must be one of the hardest things for you.

It's less than in previous years. So let's remember we've made huge progress, thanks to the miracle of vaccinations, thanks to a lot of hard work. But those kids dying every day are an abomination. 

Has the world failed these kids? 

If a kid dies because of a lack of a bed net against malaria, because of the lack of a vaccine against measles, which is a big killer in the world, because of a lack of clean water … yes, those children certainly have been failed. 

You're one of the most influential people in foreign policy and national security over the past few decades in this country. So I suspect that your advice is often sought. What would you tell President Obama that the United States needs to do first in Syria and Iraq?

Join with other nations and do everything you can through bringing influence to bear through diplomacy to end this war. It is entering its fifth year now. If today you could take us back three years, sort of like the Ghost of Christmas Future in Dickens, and say, "This is what the world's going to like three years from now if you don't do more to stop the war now." Let's then say, here we now, just imagine what it's going to be like three years from now with the increasing carnage in human lives and all of that.

So I hope the world can rededicate itself now — not just the United States but all of the governments and all of the parties who are responsible for this — to figure out a way to stop it now, because it is affecting an area of immense strategic importance to us. If you're in Europe, you're seeing more and more refugees coming. The way to deal with that is to stop the war there. And as we enter the fifth year, let's find ways to do that. I would not presume to suggest how, and UNICEF very explicitly does not get involved in politics. So tempted as I am to give you more of an answer, I think I'll pass.

Do you ever feel hopeless when you see how many conflicts there are?

Never.

And you're optimistic?

No. 

Given the great variety of things that you've done, the varied roles you've had in the public life, why did you decide to take on this challenge?

The children. The children.

This interview has been edited and condensed.