UNICEF Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
5correct to beat the crowd
47 free UNICEF trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This UNICEF trivia quiz covers the United Nations Children's Fund, from its birth as an emergency relief agency for the children of post-war Europe to the organisation working in 192 countries today. The easy questions handle the basics: what the letters originally stood for, the year and city of its founding, where its headquarters are, the orange Trick-or-Treat boxes and the famous faces who served as goodwill ambassadors. From there it moves through the founders, the executive directors from Maurice Pate to Catherine Russell, the 1965 Nobel Peace Prize, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The harder half is for people who follow the UN and international development: the Polish bacteriologist who dreamed the agency up, the Philadelphia family who invented Halloween fundraising with $17 in milk cartons, the child survival revolution and GOBI, the Innocenti research centre in Florence, the Smurf-village advert, and the day FC Barcelona became the first club to pay a charity to wear its logo. If you enjoyed our United Nations or world history quizzes, this is the deep dive on one agency. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries for UNICEF, its programmes and the people named before publishing.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What did the letters UNICEF originally stand for?
United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund
United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund became United Nations Children's Fund in 1953 to reflect a mission wider than emergencies, but it kept the acronym.
Q 02Which UN body created UNICEF in 1946?
General Assembly
The General Assembly created it to bring food, clothing and health care to children in countries devastated by World War II.
Q 03Where is UNICEF's headquarters?
New York
New York hosted the 1990 World Summit for Children, where world leaders met at the UN and set goals to improve children's lives by 2000.
Q 04Since 1979, royalties from which ABBA song have gone to UNICEF?
Chiquitita
Chiquitita has raised millions for UNICEF, and ABBA asked that the money be spent on empowering girls.
Q 05How is UNICEF funded?
Entirely by voluntary contributions
Entirely by voluntary contributions from governments and private donors, which is why independent national committees exist to raise money from the public.
Q 06In the 1950s, UNICEF and WHO led a worldwide campaign against yaws, a disfiguring disease cured with what?
Penicillin
Penicillin, given in a single injection, helped cut yaws cases from about 50 million to 2.5 million by 1964.
Q 07Which K-pop band launched the Love Myself anti-violence campaign with UNICEF in 2017?
BTS
BTS took the campaign to the United Nations in 2018, where RM spoke about overcoming his own insecurities and urged young people to speak for themselves.
Q 08Which American toured the world assessing food shortages with Maurice Pate in 1946?
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover had led the relief effort that fed millions in Europe after World War I, with Pate running its work feeding Polish children.
Q 09Maurice Pate agreed to lead UNICEF only if it treated the children of which nations equally?
Defeated and victorious nations
Defeated and victorious nations were treated alike, so UNICEF milk reached children on both sides of the war across Europe.
Q 10UNICEF was awarded which major honour in 1965?
The Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize came in December 1965, less than a year after UNICEF's founding director, Maurice Pate, died while still in charge.
Q 11Henry Labouisse, UNICEF's second executive director, married the daughter of which famous scientist?
Marie Curie
Marie Curie's daughter Ève married him in 1954 and travelled so widely with him for the agency that she became known as the First Lady of UNICEF.
Q 12Which entertainer became UNICEF's first goodwill ambassador, given the title Ambassador-at-Large in 1954?
Danny Kaye
Danny Kaye once flew his own plane to 65 cities in five days on a whirlwind tour for UNICEF.
Q 13Which actress travelled to famine-hit Ethiopia on a UNICEF mission in 1988?
Audrey Hepburn
Audrey Hepburn said she could testify to what UNICEF means to children because she had received food and medical relief herself after World War II.
Q 21Which US president declared 31 October 'UNICEF Day' in 1967?
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson's proclamation covered October 31 in every year after 1967 too, so the date has stayed National UNICEF Day ever since.
Q 22UNICEF's name was the first ever to appear on the front of which football club's shirts?
FC Barcelona
FC Barcelona turned the usual deal around, paying UNICEF €1.5 million a year instead of being paid to carry its name.
Q 23Whose tattoos came to life in a 2016 UNICEF film?
David Beckham
David Beckham's tattoos turned into scenes of children suffering abuse, to show how violence can leave lasting marks on a child.
Q 14Which singer co-founded Soccer Aid, the celebrity football match that raises money for UNICEF?
Robbie Williams
Robbie Williams set it up with his friend Jonathan Wilkes, and they persuaded Diego Maradona to play in the first match in 2006.
Q 15Which James Bond actor became a UNICEF goodwill ambassador in 1991?
Roger Moore
Roger Moore's work for UNICEF, rather than his films, earned him a knighthood in 2003.
Q 16Which Stranger Things star became UNICEF's youngest-ever goodwill ambassador in 2018?
Millie Bobby Brown
Millie Bobby Brown was 14, and she has said being bullied at school, which made her switch schools, is why she speaks out against bullying.
Q 17In which US city did Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF begin as a local event on Halloween 1950?
Philadelphia
Philadelphia was where a pastor's wife saw children at a department-store booth collecting money to send powdered milk overseas, which gave her the idea.
Q 18How much money did the first Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF collection raise in 1950?
$17
$17 was the first haul, but in 1953 the US Committee for UNICEF took the campaign up, and it has been running ever since.
Q 19In 2017, Malawi and UNICEF opened Africa's first testing corridor for what technology?
Drones
Drones had already carried dried blood samples for infant HIV tests there in a trial the year before, which led to the corridor.
Q 20What colour are the traditional Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF collection boxes?
Orange
Orange boxes were a Canadian Halloween tradition from the 1950s until UNICEF dropped them there in 2006 in favour of fundraising in schools.
Q 24A 2005 Belgian UNICEF advert shocked viewers by showing the home of which cartoon characters annihilated by warplanes?
The Smurfs
The Smurfs were chosen to shock adults who grew up with them into funding help for ex-child soldiers, and the ad aired only after 9 pm to spare young fans.
Q 25The therapeutic paste UNICEF uses to treat severely malnourished children is based on which food?
Peanuts
Peanuts go into the paste, and because it needs no cooking, water or refrigeration, most children can be treated at home instead of in hospital.
Q 26Which airline has supported UNICEF's Change for Good scheme with passenger envelopes since 1991?
Qantas
Qantas passengers can leave spare change in any currency, and frequent flyers can give their points to UNICEF instead.
Q 27UNICEF's research office, UNICEF Innocenti, is housed in a historic former orphanage in which city?
Florence
Florence's Ospedale degli Innocenti took in abandoned babies for centuries, and a swaddled infant from its façade became the emblem of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Q 28UNICEF's Supply Division, its global supply hub, is headquartered in which European capital?
Copenhagen
Copenhagen's UNICEF warehouse is where Prince William and Kate helped pack relief supplies in 2011 for children facing famine in East Africa.
Q 29What is the name of UNICEF's annual flagship report, first published in 1980?
The State of the World's Children
The State of the World's Children 1982-83 launched the child survival revolution, a push to bring cheap, proven treatments to children dying of preventable causes.
Q 30Which executive director led UNICEF for 15 years from 1980 and drove the 'child survival revolution'?
James P. Grant
James P. Grant made low-cost fixes for easily preventable child deaths UNICEF's cause, and his leadership was widely credited with saving millions of children's lives.