Keeley Hawes

Unicef UK Ambassador

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Keeley Hawes is an award winning British actress best known for her leading roles in The Durrells, The Missing and Line of Duty. She has worked with Unicef since 2012 and became an Ambassador in August 2016.

Keeley joined us in Jordan in 2016 to visit children and families living in the Za’atari refugee camp and host communities in Amman. Many of these children and families had fled their homes in Syria due to the ongoing conflict.

Keeley saw Unicef’s work in providing education and child-friendly spaces which offer learning support and psychological care, as well as being a safe space to play.

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Keeley Hawes meets Syrian families living in Za'atari Refugee Camp, Jordan

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Keeley also visited Calais in 2016 to meet unaccompanied refugee children who had fled Syria and made the dangerous journey alone through Europe as part of our reunification campaign. She joined us in calling on the UK Government to reunite child refugees with their families in the UK.

Keeley has previously travelled to Djibouti in 2012 to highlight the East Africa food crisis and make an appeal film for Soccer Aid and Papua New Guinea in 2014 to support both Soccer Aid and the Glasgow Commonwealth Games. In Papua New Guinea Keeley witnessed children with severe malnutrition being treated in the capital’s main hospital and travelled by boat to one of the most remote places on earth to see children being vaccinated against life threatening yet preventable diseases.

Follow Keeley on Twitter at @Misskeeleyhawes

 

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A Unicef member of staff measures a Syrian child's arm to check if they have malnutrition. Unicef/2017/Amin

Syria

Our work for Syrian children

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On 26 April 2016, Louai, 4, is vaccinated in Aleppo City as part of Syria's first ever nationwide routine immunization campaign since the start of the five year conflict. Until recently, the siblings lived in Al-Bab town in rural eastern Aleppo, one of the most dangerous areas to live due to the war. Their mother recently fled with her children to shelter with relatives in Aleppo city. Hearing about the campaign from neighbours, she took her four children to the nearest health centre, along with their cousin. The first full nationwide immunization campaign since the start of the five-year conflict in Syria, began on 24 April 2016, at the start of World Immunization Week. The campaign, supported by UNICEF and WHO, aims to reach all children under the age of five years old including those living under siege and in hard-to-reach areas, where routine vaccination is almost non-existent and many children have never received any vaccinations. Access to children in these areas is key to the success of the campaign. After five years of conflict, national immunization rates have dropped from 90 per cent to 57 per cent, putting the country's 2.8 million under-five-year-old at risk of life-threatening vaccine preventable diseases. In this campaign, children will be immunized against polio, measles, rubella, pertussis (whooping cough), diphtheria, tetanus, hepatitis B and haemophilus influenza type B. Access for health workers is critical to protect these children from deadly diseases. Vaccination is being provided through fixed health centres, outreach activities and mobile teams where required.

Keeping children safe with vaccines

The fight against deadly disease