by Adam Fifield
China’s smashing immunization success coincided with perhaps the country’s greatest crisis in a generation. On June 4, 1989—while Grant was consumed by Operation Lifeline Sudan—the country was engulfed in chaos. After months of protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, Premier Li Peng ordered a ruthless military crackdown on unarmed civilians. Hundreds, possibly thousands, were killed. For many, it became the dividing line in modern Chinese history—everything was then “before” or “after” Tiananmen Square, despite the government’s subsequent efforts to scrub the event out of memory and history books.
As for Grant, who considered China his “home country” and even occasionally referred to himself as Chinese, the event was a conundrum. How you do promote a country’s immunization gains when its government is being roundly condemned for murdering its own citizens?
And so, as much of the rest of the world watched in horror and denounced the vicious actions of China’s government, Grant kept quiet. Tiananmen Square was the news of the summer of 1989, bandied by lips across the globe—but not by his. Several staff members who worked in the UNICEF China office say that—whatever his views on the matter—he simply did not discuss it.
But what else could he do? If he joined the chorus of outrage—if he spoke about Tiananmen Square in even the vaguest way—he would alienate China’s government. During the final crucial lap in the global immunization crusade, UNICEF’s biggest success story so far would be clouded by violence. He also didn’t want China to stop cooperating and stop immunizing—not that it necessarily would have done so. But the government’s vindictive reputation was clear.
Tiananmen wasn’t the only instance when he avoided criticizing China. In fact, he once offered effusive praise for the country’s brutal “one-child” policy, which was adopted in 1979 and led to forced abortions, sterilizations, and female infanticides. In 1976, while president of the Overseas Development Council, Grant had written a letter to Chinese officials lauding several figures, including Mao Zedong—one of the twentieth century’s biggest mass murderers—as “outstanding leaders.”
He waited for the Tiananmen furor to subside. In October 1989, four months after the massacre, he flew to Beijing and met with several Chinese officials. He had traveled to China frequently over the last decade, including to visit his second grandchild, a girl named Divindy, who was born in Beijing at the same hospital where he himself had been born in 1922. (Divindy’s father and Grant’s middle son, Jamie, was then teaching in Beijing as a Fulbright scholar.) Every time he visited, he got the redcarpet treatment.
China’s state-run news service, Xinhua, covered his October 1989 visit as though he were a head of state. During a reception held by UNICEF, according to the Xinhua account, Grant noted that his grandfather had come to China as a missionary exactly one hundred years ago, adding, “At this moment, I have a feeling of returning to my homeland.” He then heralded China’s immunization gains, noting that the country’s vaccination coverage was now better than Western Europe’s and North America’s.
In late 1989 and early 1990, Grant and the tenacious Dr. Nyi Nyi carefully watched immunization results from around the world, looking for bright spots and signs of trouble. Globally, the overall coverage level had by now reached about 70 percent—a staggering figure, when you consider that in 1980 it had ranged between 16 and 21 percent. The number of kids getting immunized had more than tripled, but the gap was still wide. They would need a lot of speed and faith to vault across it. Nyi Nyi began to lean on UNICEF country representatives even harder.
The pressure was crushing. No one wanted to be singled out for not making the target—a fear that may have led to overoptimistic projections. Buzzing around the reports from various countries was a persnickety question: Could the numbers be trusted? If they made it, did they really make it?
As the deadline barreled at him, Grant never betrayed any nervousness or worry—at least not publicly. “He never had any doubt,” says Nyi Nyi. “He never wavered.”
Chapter 14
THE IMPOSSIBLE MADE POSSIBLE
In front of a wall of iconic green marble, flanked by two giant television screens, Jim Grant stood in the spot that had been occupied by the greatest and most reviled leaders in recent history—a grand pulpit for despots and freedom fighters, peacemakers and warmongers—and gazed somberly into the vast, vertiginous, domed cathedral of the UN General Assembly. Radiating out before him in curved row upon curved row of seats were the most powerful people in the world, fixing their attention on the earnest, amiable man in the blue suit, all waiting to hear what he would say. Many of them were here today because he had asked them to be, because this was one person they simply could not turn down. It was the pinnacle of Jim Grant’s life—a moment many decades in the making, a personal and professional crossroads. Here, at the largest gathering of world leaders ever held, was an unrivaled opportunity to plead his case.
At the helm of UNICEF for ten years now, he had aged. The toll of the last decade had deepened the lines on his face. Small liver spots dotted his forehead. He was thinner, ever more slightly stooped. Bags the size of large garlic cloves bulged under his bright, narrow, almond-shaped eyes. Still, those eyes gleamed like urgent beacons, searching, imploring, defying. As he took in the scene before him, the rustling panoply of influence and prestige, the sixty-eight-year-old lawyer prepared to deliver the most important opening statement and/or closing argument he would ever make.
After nearly two years of planning, arm-twisting, and behind-the-scenes tussling, he had pulled it off: the World Summit for Children had finally materialized. In February 1990, UN secretary general Javier Pérez de Cuéllar had sent out invitations to all heads of state represented in the General Assembly (since the apartheid government of South Africa was not a member state, it was not invited). Speculation about attendance swirled—would anyone actually show up? If so, how many? Would it be a pathetic handful? Would any of the big countries show up? To tamp down the anxiety, Grant started a one-dollar office betting pool. He proffered the boldest guess, predicting fifty-three world leaders would come. All other bets were far lower. When the final tally came in, even Grant’s expectations were shattered. A total of seventy-one heads of state had accepted, in addition to eighty-eight high-level representatives from other countries.
Grant had insisted on securing George H. W. Bush, saying that it would be a second-rate meeting without the US president. Bush’s attendance seemed unlikely at first, and Grant asked Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney if there was anything he could do to get him to come. Mulroney told UNICEF staff that Bush’s advisers had discouraged him from attending, but that he would impress upon the American president how important it was for him to be there.
It was a turbulent international moment, when Bush was trying to stake his claim in the post–Cold War world; getting him to focus on the issue of saving children was like asking a cutthroat investment banker to spend some time in a soup kitchen. A few weeks before the summit, on September 11, 1990, Bush had addressed the US Congress about Iraq’s recent invasion of Kuwait and called for a “new world order … in which nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice.” He was beginning to make a case for US military involvement in the Persian Gulf.
Whether or not Bush would show up became an open spigot of anxious conjecture right up until a day or two before the meeting. “The Americans kept us in suspense,” says Kul Gautam.
The brewing conflict in the Persian Gulf was also on Grant’s mind—he was worried it would siphon media attention away from the summit. Fortunately, it didn’t seem to have much of an effect. In the month before the meeting, interest in children’s issues soared among journalists—fueling stories in news outlets all over the world, including, in the United States, the New York Times, Time magazine, and CBS’s 60 Minutes. Grant was suddenly a sought-after media guest and was featured as the Person of the Week on ABC’s World News Tonight. A week before the meeting, candlelight vigils highl
ighting the needs of struggling children drew more than a million people all over the globe. The preventable plight of dying and suffering children was now in plain view before the eyes of the world, as never before. Grant wanted to keep it there for as long as possible.
The sense of urgency swirling around the summit was intensified by the immunization campaign’s imminent deadline and by the recent entering into force of the “Magna Carta for Children.” On September 2, 1990, the Convention on the Rights of the Child had snared the requisite twenty country ratifications to become officially activated; it had been adopted and opened for signature by the UN General Assembly on November 20, 1989. The convention’s fifty-four articles—which afford children a set of basic rights—had, in fact, been ratified faster than any other human rights treaty. The treaty had languished for years—until Allegra Morelli and other UNICEF staffers finally persuaded Grant to back it. The great mesmerizer’s involvement had, once again, proven decisive.
At 6:30 on Sunday morning, Grant and the UN secretary general, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, had stood with several senior UNICEF officials at the entrance to the UN’s North Delegates’ Lounge—like an eager wedding party at the head of a monstrous receiving line—and greeted heads of state as they filtered in for a buffet breakfast. Voluble and grinning, Grant was given to guffaws of delight as he jostled hands. Pérez de Cuéllar was reserved and mild-mannered; he often wore heavy glasses and a slightly startled expression. When shaking the secretary general’s hand, most heads of state addressed him formally, calling him “Mr. Secretary General.” But when many of them saw Grant, according to Kul Gautam, their formality dissolved. They gripped his arm enthusiastically or hugged him, yelling out “Jim!” or “Jim, my friend!”
But Pérez de Cuéllar didn’t seem to mind—Grant had charmed him, too. The Peruvian diplomat appreciated the glory the “Mad American” had brought to the UN and, in turn, gave him pretty much free rein. This would not be the case with his successor, Egyptian bureaucrat Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who would come to power in 1992 and would try to shorten Grant’s leash.
Even with leaders he personally liked, Grant kept his greetings on the receiving line as brief as he could. He knew it would take at least two and a half hours to process all the heads of state, which meant they had about two minutes to welcome and escort each one inside (including their entourages and security details). They had to accommodate seventy-one motorcades in rapid succession (some of them with five cars each) and coordinate with UN security; the New York City Police Department; the US Coast Guard; the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the US State Department; and the Secret Service. They then had to herd everyone out of the limos and into the buildings before the 9:30 a.m. start time. The logistical challenges were Byzantine and off-putting—nothing like this had ever been attempted before.
“It got messy,” says UNICEF veteran Fouad Kronfol, who was in the greeting party. Traffic snarls snaked along First Avenue, and some leaders ended up getting out of their limos and walking. But everyone was a good sport about it, Kronfol adds. “They were gracious.”
Another quandary: persuading some leaders to be the first to arrive. Not everyone could get there at 8:30 or 9:00 a.m. In an environment of rigid protocol in which every leader expects fawning treatment, how do you not cause offense by telling one prime minister that he needs to leave his hotel at 6:00 a.m., while another can lounge around till 8:00 a.m.? How do you soothe a bevy of bruised, overweening egos?
The solution: you convince one very important leader to be part of the sunrise crowd. British prime minister Margaret Thatcher was asked if she wouldn’t mind coming at 6:30 a.m.—so that the other early birds wouldn’t feel slighted. The Iron Lady agreed. A special “Breakfast with Maggie” was organized. Grant escorted Thatcher up to the lounge, and many leaders clamored for a chance to mingle with Maggie.
There were other hitches. In one heart-stopping moment, a bomb threat was intercepted by UN security. Carl Tinstman, who had been tapped by Grant to act as UNICEF’s security point person, was in the security control room when the threat was phoned in. Panic locked him in its vise. “Racing through my mind is: Do we go down and tell them?” recalls Tinstman. “Do we evacuate all seventy heads of state and government?… We certainly don’t want to have a bomb go off and kill seventy heads of state!”
It turned out to be a hoax. The meeting went on.
One of the most trying crises took root weeks before, when special agreements that would be signed by all participating leaders were being negotiated. Grant didn’t want the summit to be another “talk shop” (as Adamson had named such ineffectual meetings). The meeting had cost close to $3 million to organize; an additional $2.1 million had been slated for “mobilization activities.” He knew what critics were saying and needed to show the money was well-spent. He also knew a whiff of hypocrisy might cling to the rarefied air during this historic occasion: many of these leaders, including Thatcher, had cut funding for children’s programs or had enacted policies contributing to the suffering of their youngest citizens. In many cases, they were very much part of the problem. Why give politicians who had essentially harmed children the chance to burnish their public image for all the world to see?
Because Grant wanted to goad them into changing their policies. He wanted the leaders to walk away with a promise in their pocket—a promise he would do his utmost to make them keep.
Two documents were drawn up to extract that promise. World leaders had agreed in advance to sign them when they attended the meeting, but only after a protracted and testy negotiation. The World Declaration on the Survival, Protection and Development of Children bound participants “to give every child a better future” and set out a program that included a pledge to promote ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to “work for a solid effort of national and international action to enhance children’s health,” and to “work for a global attack on poverty.” The accompanying and bluntly named Plan of Action had the real muscle, calling on governments to do a series of very explicit things, all by the year 2000. Among them: cut child mortality by one-third, cut maternal mortality by half, cut child malnutrition by half, eliminate guinea worm disease, eradicate polio globally, eliminate neonatal tetanus by 1995, eliminate iodine deficiency disorders, eliminate vitamin A deficiency disorders, and provide universal access to safe drinking water and basic education. Altogether, there were twenty-seven summit goals. Achieving them, it was believed, could save fifty million children’s lives over the next decade.
The goals covered a wide range of issues—Grant could certainly no longer be accused of a narrow, myopic focus. The near success of the immunization effort had proven that sweeping progress on a global scale was indeed “doable” and had justified a broader and bolder agenda. It was time for Jim Grant’s phase two.
The UN wasn’t used to meeting goals with such time-bound specificity, and they made people nervous. As the language of the declaration and Plan of Action was being considered in the weeks before the gathering, some members of the UNICEF board stubbornly fought it. In one case, a diplomat from the Netherlands spurned quantifiable targets as a bad idea. This man essentially held the whole process hostage, says Gautam, who was involved in drafting the documents.
So Grant did what he called an end run—he simply went over the Dutch diplomat’s head. He called the government minister who oversaw development cooperation in the Netherlands and mentioned the diplomat’s opposition. Soon, the man received a call from the Dutch government instructing him to drop his objections and clarifying that “our government from the highest level supports Mr. Grant’s approach,” recalls Gautam. “As you can imagine, this guy lost face.”
The thorniest protest over language in the summit documents came from the Catholic Church. A number of European and Asian countries had insisted that the issue of family planning be addressed in the summit declaration as a way to combat population growth (this did not refer to abortion, but rat
her to “birth spacing”). The Vatican lodged a stern protest. While it was not a member of the General Assembly, the Holy See enjoyed “permanent observer status.”
“Jim Grant wanted the Catholic Church to be on our side,” says Gautam. “The only way we could have them on our side was not to speak about family planning … But there were many countries who said we absolutely have to have it, so what do we do?”
The only way out, says Gautam, was “creative wordsmithing.” The phrase “family planning” was changed to “responsible planning of family size.”
That seemed to do the trick.
“It took weeks to agree to those three or four words,” says Gautam.
The crisis was seemingly averted—until it wasn’t. On the day of the summit, attendees were given big, bound copies of the summit declaration and the Plan of Action, translated into each of the six official UN languages. Everything looked okay until a Vatican monsignor (the pope couldn’t make it) noticed that the French version of the declaration did not contain the agreed-upon phrase. The words planification familiale leered conspicuously from the page. Apparently, the UN Translations Service had goofed. In the ultrasensitive milieu of the General Assembly, it was a tiny ripple that could become a tsunami.
Gautam was standing on a balcony in the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) chamber when he got an urgent message from Grant, via a UN page. The diminutive Nepali raced downstairs to find his slightly agitated boss.
“What happened?” Grant demanded.
Gautam explained the error and said that the Holy See might not sign the declaration. Grant listened, whispered, “Do something!” and then whooshed off.
Gautam quickly consulted with UNICEF’s Marco Vianello-Chiodo, the towering, bearded Italian who had earlier secured Italy’s transformative $100 million contribution. The two men came up with a possible solution: ask the Vatican to sign the English text, with an addendum explaining that the signature applies to the English version only. UNICEF would ensure all other versions were corrected posthaste.
