Nanami Akimoto joined UN-Habitat as a UN Volunteer Programme Officer in April 2018 under the Human Resource Development Programme for Peace and Development. Her assignment was fully funded by Japan. She had broad expectations of supporting the work of UN-Habitat Cambodia in advocacy and playing a critical role developing and maintaining networks with donors, development partners and other UN agencies.

As a national UN Volunteer, I contribute to the work of the Global Land Indicators Initiative (GLII): a collaborative and inclusive process for developing global land indicators and whose partners aim at making global-scale monitoring of land governance a reality by 2021. GLII is hosted and facilitated by the Global Land Tool Network (GLTN) in the Land, Housing and Shelter Section of the Urban Practices Branch of UN-Habitat in Nairobi, Kenya.

Informal settlements are rapidly growing as Africa urbanizes, and a key marker of this growth is the glaring spatial inequalities being witnessed across the continent. In Nairobi, for example, 63-70 per cent of people live in informal settlements (UN, 2015), occupying only 6 per cent of urban land (UN Habitat, 2017).

This week, Habitat III, the third United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development is taking place in Quito, Ecuador, to establish a sustainable Urban Agenda for cities as we work towards achieving the Global Goals. 

Ramallah, State of Palestine: They say if you travel the world carrying the same thoughts and attitude throughout your journey, it is as if you have never left your place. Cognition and knowledge is not about how many places you have seen; sometimes it is how you can view the same place or thing in different ways and from different perspectives. Being a national UN Volunteer provided me with the opportunity to see my country, Palestine, in a different way.

Ramallah, State of Palestine:  I love people, cities and towns. For that reason, I chose to be a spatial/urban planner and I plan for people. When we plan, people should be at the centre of the process; and we should aim to improve people’s lives. People, cities, towns and villages cannot be viewed separately, they are so interconnected. As long as people are there, cities always develop and never stop.

Quito, Ecuador:  An experience away from home is challenging, a confrontation with a different culture at times confusing, and the lack of familiarity frustrating. I believe that during my yearlong UN Youth Volunteer assignment in Ecuador, all stars were aligned: rarely did I deal with any of the above. The Andes, the city in its midst, and my host institution, the Ministry of Urban Development and Housing, greeted me with open arms and slowly taught me the tips and tricks of living and working in Ecuador.

How does the recruitment of UN Volunteers add value to UN-Habitat? As an efficient, speedy and diverse talent solution for UN partners, UN Volunteers serve with UN entities to bring people to the forefront of development, peace and humanitarian issues. UNV manages a pool of over 350,000 talented and qualified UN Volunteers who can be deployed to bolster the delivery of UN-Habitat’s programmes and support the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.