The Federation remains active in drawing the attention of the United Nations community to mental health issues and gives strong support to the NGO Committee on Mental Health, New York. WFMH played a role in founding the Committee in 1996, and its Main Representative, Nancy Wallace, was its chair until June 2001. Her last responsibility in that capacity was to arrange a symposium at UN Headquarters on 5 April for WHO’s World Health Day on the theme, “Mental Health – Stop Exclusion: Dare to Care.” The co-sponsors were WHO, the UN Department of Public Information, and the two NGO Committees on Mental Health and on Ageing. Speakers included Leon Eisenberg, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at Harvard Medical School; Eero Latinen, Senior Medical Officer in Finland’s Ministry of Social Affairs and Health; Jose Miguel Caldas de Almeida, Mental Health Coordinator at the Pan American Health Organization; and D Myrna Lewis of Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York. The Government of Finland sponsored a reception afterwards, featuring remarks by Marjatta Rasi, Finland’s Permanent Representative to the UN.
Ms. Wallace remains involved in many areas of advocacy at the UN on behalf of the Federation. She currently serves on the Executive Committee as Past Chair of the UN NGO Committee on Mental Health. She attended the March 2001 session of the Commission on the Status of Women, together with UN Representative Ricki Kantrowitz and Board member Chueh Chang. Professor Chang arranged to bring several WFMH members from the Asia-Pacific region to attend the Commission meetings and organized a special panel on “Mental Health Needs for Women of the Asia-Pacific Region.” Ms. Wallace helped to arrange a program at the UN for World Mental Health Day in October, which focused on the multiple consequences of September 11 on mental health. At the end of the year she also organized and chaired a program to mark the UN’s Human Rights Day and the Ten Year Anniversary of UN Resolution 46/117 – “The Protection of Persons with Mental Illness and the Improvement of Mental Health Care.”
Ricki Kantrowitz, a longtime Federation UN Representative, is the Chair of the Working Group on Gender Perspectives for the UN NGO Committee on Mental Health. She led a successful campaign to include mental health on the agenda at the meeting of the UN Commission on the Status of Women in March. She helped organize an important panel during the Commission, “HIV/AIDS, Women, and Mental Health.”
Anie Kalayjian, also a Federation UN Representative, chaired a major conference for NGOs in September for the UN Department of Information. This annual meeting, with a theme about the diversity of the volunteer experience, opened on September 10 with participants from 92 countries. It was disrupted by the evacuation of UN Headquarters on September 11, but managed to reconvene briefly two days later.
We note here the remarkable presence of mind of one of the Federation’s UN representatives, Haydee Montenegro, who witnessed the collapse of the twin towers on September 11 from the New Jersey side of the Hudson River, went immediately to her local Fire Department, and found herself assigned at once to do triage work with people being evacuated from Manhattan. Later in the day she was sent to the hospital closest to the World Trade Center, and did emergency response work at several locations in lower Manhattan for the following two weeks.
Two new persons were appointed to represented WFMH at the UN in New York during 2001. Pamela Y. Collins, M.D., M.P.H., is working on advocacy issues related to HIV/AIDS and stigma and discrimination related to ethnicity, gender and mental illness.
Carol L. Kessler, M.D., is the Federation’s liaison to UNICEF.
The WFMH UN Representatives are:
Geneva
Stanislas Flache
UN New York
Nancy E. Wallace (Main Representative)
Pamela Y. Collins
Anie S. Kalayjian
Ricki E. Kantrowitz
Carol L. Kessler
Haydee Montenegro
Paris
Madeleine Riviere
Vienna
Gertraud Cerwenka