VOICES: Mia Farrow Talks of Work in Africa
July 2, 2006 — -- Mia Farrow shocked audiences a generation ago in "Rosemary's Baby." Now, the actress is trying to save children as an ambassador for UNICEF. The U.N. agency dedicated to poor children turns 60 this year, and Farrow just returned from her second UNICEF mission to Darfur, Sudan.
Mia Farrow: I looked into all the agencies, and I just found wherever there are children suffering there is UNICEF. … I've had the great privilege of going to countries that other people don't have the opportunity to go to. … That's my job as goodwill ambassador, is to see what I've seen and to witness what is happening in the world.
UNICEF invited me to come in on the initiative to eradicate polio and I was very interested to do that.
Farrow, in Nigeria in 2001: I had polio myself when I was nine years old. And I have a son who is adopted from India who is paraplegic as a result of polio.
Mia Farrow: When I first came on board with this, there were about 350,000 cases of paralytic polio around the world. And now it's down to about 2,000, so we're nearly months away from seeing a global eradication of polio.
I think what people [need] to know now that-- I mean, in Darfur alone UNICEF has only 20 percent of what it needs to continue its life-saving work there, and that's really why I'm here -- to tell people I've seen firsthand that UNICEF and other aid agencies are all that there is right now to sustain these lives, keeping people alive. … The death count if we look at international crisis groups is about 450,000. No one knows for sure. … And there are areas of Darfur that no one can even get to.
Tell your leadership, you know, "Okay, there may not be oil in Darfur, but there are human lives -- six million human lives --and we care about them." We are a family, we are a human family. And when one member is suffering we all suffer.
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