Maggie Black is a writer and editor specialising in international development issues. During the 1980s, she was on the staff of UNICEF in New York as Editor.
Publications, and her principal subject areas, have since concerned predicaments of children and women in societies affected by poverty and war, and how to enhance the effectiveness of programmes intended to improve their well-being. Since she left the UN system, she has specialised particularly in water and sanitation, and in the protection of vulnerable children, especially girls.
She has written a number of books and reports in these areas, most recently The Atlas of Water and The Last Taboo: Opening the door on the global sanitation crisis. Other books on water include Water, Life Force and The No-Nonsense Guide to Water and Water: A matter of life and health about water in village India. Before she joined UNICEF in Nairobi in 1977 as an Information Officer, Maggie was an editor of New Internationalist magazine and before that, with Oxfam.
Since 1989 she has been an independent consultant, working on major studies, reports and handbooks for UNICEF, UNDP, WHO, ILO, UNRISD, UNCHR, IPPF, the World Bank, the EC, the Global Water Partnership, Oxfam, Save the Children, Comic Relief, and Anti-Slavery International. She has also written in-depth historical studies of UNICEF and Oxfam, notably Children first: The story of UNICEF and OXFAM: A cause for our times. She has also been a guest editor of New Internationalist magazine, and is the author of the No-Nonsense Guide to International Development and the No-Nonsense Guide to the United Nations.
