Profile: Kaori Abe - Japan

Kaori Abe from Japan worked as an APO at FAO for three and a half years from 1999 to 2003. She was based in FAO's Country Office in Mozambique for most of that time. Kaori currently works as an emergency operations officer within FAO's Emergency Operations and Rehabilitation Division.

"Every year the Japanese government selects candidates to work as APOs within the UN system. I applied for a position with FAO. I have a degree in Law and Development Studies but my specialization is in environmental sociology and gender. An example of this would be the study of environmental justice on population displacements from traditional lands like the Masai people of Tanzania or ethnic peoples in Myanmar who have been moved on to make way for a national park. FAO's gender and development service in the Sustainable Development Department focuses on these kind of issues. The first project I worked on was 'LinKS Project - Gender, biodiversity and local knowledge systems for food security'. It covered several countries including Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. The project focused on making local and national government aware of the impact of gender on natural resources through workshops and gender analysis techniques.

I see myself as an 'action-oriented' person, I like to get out and see things as they happen. As the FAO APO Programme is so flexible, I was able to transfer to the FAO Country Office in Mozambique to work on this project. It was an interesting time to arrive in the country as politically and economically Mozambique was showing signs of real stability. However, in 2000 and 2001 the country was hit by floods which affected almost a quarter of the population and destroyed a lot of its infrastructure particularly in the agricultural sector. There was a lot more attention from the international community and it meant that the UN agencies were working closely together. For me, it was a very valuable experience to see how larger UN projects were shared between agencies and then scaled up across the country.

While I was in Mozambique, I worked for diverse FAO projects on community forestry, natural resource management, plant protection and conservation agriculture from project formulation to management and implementation of activities and negotiation with donors. It was very interesting because I was involved in the various cycles of project management and had the opportunity to communicate with a diverse range of people - from farmers to ministry staff. I like communicating with different people who have diverse needs and priorities and enjoy trying to think of how all sides can work together for a common objective by bringing different people together. It gave me real-time experience of discussing a certain policy with a high-level government official in the Ministry of Agriculture while also being able to understand the actual implication of that policy on a vulnerable farmer in a small remote village.

I also had a lot more independence in terms of organizing my work and my supervisor always provided me with good advice and guidance whenever I needed so I feel that I really grew professionally. Working both in HQ and the field really broadened my view and helped me to understand the presence of FAO in the wider context of development assistance for food security especially in Africa. I like working in these kind of fast-moving environments. Once the APO Programme finished, I moved to the Emergency Operations and Rehabilitation Division at FAO where I am currently assisting FAO's response to the Dafur crisis through various interventions including seed and tool distribution and helping to implement FAO's rehabilitation projects now that the peace agreement has been signed. The FAO APO Programme allows you to work in the kind of environment that suits your personality and goals which is essential for someone like me."