Final words to FAO-RAP colleagues, Friday 15, September

Dear all, colleagues, consultants, GS staff…. 

After almost 28 years of servicing FAO member countries, I have decided to anticipate my retirement for reasons that some of you do know. The time spent in Bangkok has been short, so we did had limited opportunities to interact and working together. However, it has been enough to get an idea of how far is HQs, particularly in this historical period. The efforts to promote stronger country driven processes, to set-up transversal technical teams for the benefit of the field program, the need to insist more and more on the need to work as a team, all these buzz words have been transformed by the Roman elite in a sort of rhetoric that has been accompanied by the usual top-down approach and lack of empathy vis-a-vis the staff, consultants and all support colleagues. I leave RAP with the hope that here the story might be something different, more human, although the heritage of the past is difficult to be overcome. I have witnessed the difficulties of promoting a philosophy of the “otherness”, caring about the others, giving time, info and resources to genuinely build something different, eventually more time consuming, but more in line with the holistic and complex nature of livelihoods outside our buildings. 

I still recall when one of my Directors in HQs few years criticized me for “losing” time with other technical divisions (in particular the Gender one), instead of concentrating on the specific products of our unit. I always considered with sadness that Director, not able to understand the importance of a team approach for the benefit of the people we serve. However, when considering that careers towards the top management and directors’ positions are based on the old principle of “mors tua vita mea”, I understood his concern. This has always been my problem in FAO: believing in the principles we declared and wrote in our publications instead of accepting the daily practices of my superiors at all levels. 

I leave this Organization with a mix of sadness and happiness. I am happy because some small things have moved up, product of a real teamwork, internal and external. I am happy because I leave behind me several young (and no longer young) fellows, within and outside the Organization) with whom we have grown together, learning from each other, exchanging views, opinions, sometimes being very critical one toward the others, but always respecting this diversity. 

I am sad because I think much more could have been done. Too often, the positive things we have done in some countries, have been “in spite of” the chiefs we had. I am sad because I still see the dominance of the individualistic nature of humans, which is then reflected in the actions we do: small and limited, and this might be okay, but very rarely conceived as part of “one” vision. It is true that when we have been selected for our positions we were not judged on our real team building capacity, but on our individual skills. Now time has arrived to understand that a series of good individual skills do not match for a good team. Having 11 Maradona (or Messi) doesn’t ensure you will win the Champions.

We do not necessarily need more resources, I think we need to use what we have in a different way. Building bridges of collaboration, going against the mainstream of “being the best one”, in order to repeat the miracle Leicester team made 2 years ago in British Premier League. The team (and the Trainer) won, not the individual.

Finally, I am sad because I have seen how little we have moved ahead, as FAO, on the understanding of the importance of Gender. 28 years ago, this was the first internal training I got when joining FAO. Now, my feeling is that we are still back as we were. 

To conclude, I am sad because of the increasing precarization of the jobs offered by the Organization. I grew up with the understanding that we, the staff, we were the real resource of the Organization. Because of our experience, skills but also thanks to the long-term contracts, we could challenge many of the bottlenecks in the development agenda, including those of policy nature, resulting from the asymmetries of power that poor people face daily in their life. Now, with more and more precarious contracts, it is difficult to imagine the Organization standing for the values, principles and rights we affirm to defend. We are going through a period of history when more than ever UN agencies would be needed. But UN agencies that respect and promote diversity, that build on the variety of opinions and where staff would be encouraged to stand-up in front of injustice, in order for us to give voice to those who have no voice and cannot be heard. Difficult to imagine how this might happen when silence has become the rule and when critical voices are kindly invited to leave the floor. Anyway, this is a story that you know eventually even better than me. 

Let me close with a final special thanks to Ms. Arunee, Bongkoch and Dora for their very much appreciated support for the installation and the repatriation.

All the best to all of you, paolo