UN officer cites Soka for success
2009.05.07
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Over the past 24 years, Kazutoshi Nagasaka, 49, has been working for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Having started as a legal officer, he has been engaged in a range of facet of refugee assistance—from the set up and administration of refugee camps to activities for repatriating them to their homeland, from planning of refugee assistance programmes to preparation for a refugee emergency, helping the people displaced by conflicts and persecution in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. And he credits his alma mater for providing him with both the inspiration and the tools to excel in his UN service. On his first day at Soka University in April 1978, Nagasaka had found his calling, when school founder Daisaku Ikeda, in a speech welcoming the incoming freshmen, challenged them to master a foreign language and set their sights on the world. Majoring in law, Nagasaka promptly joined the English club and grew so enamored with club activities that “I studied harder at learning English than I did my major,” he recalls with a smile. The lapse was only momentary. Nagasaka took to international law, which led to a lasting interest in the UN, its agencies and myriad of peace building roles. He was also selected to study at the University of Arizona under Soka’s year-long Study Abroad program. It was an occasion in which he not only polished his English proficiency even further, but took part in the Model UN simulation exercise and decided that his career path lay in the world body. In 1985, he was accepted to the UNHCR under its junior professional officer programme and subsequently appointed toUNHCR services. Since then, he’s served in the Sudan, Thailand, Switzerland (at the UNHCR’s Headquarters in Geneva), Cambodia, Liberia, and is now based in Bangkok. “When I was at Soka, there were only a handful of students who would think of working for the UN around me,” says Nagasaka. “That made me somewhat of a maverick then, but I now feel proud to be a pioneer as I see a growing number of Soka students today aiming to work for the UN.” |
Nagasaka with friends in Sudan |
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