UNICEF was founded after World War II with the mission of protecting children’s lives and rights. In the 1960s many newly independent states struggled economically while the Cold War divided the world. Remaining neutral, UNICEF delivered immunizations, maternal and child health programs, and basic education, using children as a focal point for global cooperation. By narrowing the “development gap” faced by low-income countries, the organization aimed to reduce grievances and conflict, a forward-looking idea at the time. The Nobel Committee recognized that reducing social and economic inequality is as crucial for peace as disarmament itself.

After becoming a permanent agency in 1953, UNICEF structured its work around technical cooperation, material supply, and advocacy. In the 1960s it sharply cut child mortality through oral polio vaccines, DDT-based malaria control, and distribution of powdered milk and school meals. Funding came not only from governments but also from grassroots sources such as UNICEF greeting cards and World Children’s Day campaigns, visibly embodying international solidarity. This model later informed program designs of UNDP and WHO. By systematically publishing health, education, and water-sanitation indicators, UNICEF pioneered a results-oriented approach in development assistance.

In 1965 UNICEF’s expenditures stood at roughly US$ 90 million, with over 60 percent allocated to health and nutrition. Agenda-setting embraced the “low-cost, high-impact interventions” proposed in the 1962 Bent-Carlson report, launching operational research on large-scale periodic immunizations that presaged the EPI. To sidestep Cold War political risk, UNICEF introduced ‘child-years of life saved’ as an evaluation metric, offering ideology-free cost-effectiveness data. The Supply Division leveraged international tenders to cut vaccine unit prices by an average of 35 percent, a prototype for the later GAVI procurement model. The Nobel Committee’s framing of peace as the reduction of “structural violence” dovetailed with contemporary theoretical advances in peace studies by Galtung and others.