Dr. Nigel Fisher Lecture

Pandemics, Poverty, and Children

A former Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dr. Fisher has served as UNICEF’s Director of Office of Emergency Operations, as Regional Director for South Asia, and as the agency’s head of operations in several conflict zones – in Northern Iraq after the first Gulf War, in Rwanda at the end of that country’s genocidal civil war, and for Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of 9-11. He has lived and worked in a dozen developing countries in Asia, the Middle East and Africa and has devoted considerable time to work on child and maternal health care and on girls’ education programming in the developing world. He was awarded Canada’s Meritorious Service Cross for his humanitarian work in Rwanda and holds an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from McMaster University.