1 June 2026, Hiroshima, Japan – Tatsuki Sakai from Japan is a policy officer at the World Food Programme (WFP) Togo, where he manages an agriculture and school feeding programme.
Tatsuki’s passion for food security was sparked in childhood by a movie that he saw, which showed children dying of starvation. It made him question the stark inequality between those with plenty to eat and those without. That spark eventually led him to work for the Embassy of Japan in the Republic of Cameroon, where he supported food aid programmes for developing countries, and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Tanzania, where he worked on agricultural development.

29 May 2026, Hiroshima, Japan – Miki Sakiyama has built her career working for gender equality and women’s empowerment. In her current role at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), she supports programmes that advance women’s rights, youth participation, and inclusive development.

22 May 2026, Hiroshima, Japan – Lydia Tabu Casmiro Jamba from South Sudan works to help build peace in her country. Now managing programming for a national, women-led NGO that she helped to found and studying for her master’s degree, Lydia joined the FY2024 Primary Course of the Program for Global Human Resource Development for Peacebuilding and Development to strengthen her chosen career path.

April 2026 - Small Island Developing States (SIDS) such as Saint Lucia face a persistent challenge: producing timely, accurate, and granular data to inform decision-making. Rapidly changing informal settlements, combined with limited statistical resources, make it difficult to maintain up-to-date population estimates and vulnerability assessments.
For Saint Lucia’s Central Statistics Office (CSO), the challenge became particularly visible when the 2022 population and household census was estimated to have a 23.3 per cent undercount rate. Based on listings and field experience, the CSO suspected that much of this undercount was concentrated in informal settlement areas, where housing patterns can change quickly between census cycles. These gaps are not only technical. They affect how services are planned, how risks are assessed, and how resources are allocated.

10 February 2026, Hiroshima, Japan - Andre Magpantay is a university instructor of art studies from the Philippines, whose work focuses on art and ecology and on how art engages with memory. In 2025, he joined the UNITAR programme SDGs and Digital Futures: Changemaking Through AI and Digital Storytelling, where he explored how digital tools could be used to capture memories and tell stories that help people recover, prevent future disasters and foster peace.

30 January 2026, Hiroshima, Japan - Paolo Zurita is Assistant Director for the Peace and Security Division at the Office of the United Nations and International Organizations, Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs. In this role, he is responsible for handling peace and security matters, especially nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament. He joined the UNITAR Hiroshima Nuclear Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Training in February 2025 to build his technical skills in this highly specialized field.

28 January 2026, Hiroshima, Japan - Kiana Dominique Cezar is a supply chain data analyst from the Philippines, working in a global energy and petrochemicals company, and previously volunteered with a Europe–Asia youth think tank. In 2025, she joined the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) programme “SDGs and Digital Futures: Changemaking Through AI and Digital Storytelling”, where she explored how AI and digital technologies can be used to tell stories that connect sustainable development, history and peacebuilding.

22 January 2026, Hiroshima, Japan - Jinto Kanazawa is a high school student in Hiroshima. In 2025, he joined the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) “SDGs and Digital Futures: Changemaking Through AI and Digital Storytelling” where he learned how digital tools can be used to share personal stories connected to peace and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

21 January 2026, Hiroshima, Japan - When Mriganika Singh Tanwar from India saw the flyer for UNITAR’s 2024 Sea and Human Security Training Programme, she had just completed her master’s degree in International Relations at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. At the time, her focus was on international security and strategic technologies. “I found it … fascinating how [this] diverse region – tied by culture, economy, geography and demography – is also connected by two sets of common challenges: sea and human security,” she says.

14 January 2026, Hiroshima, Japan - Hiroshima high school student Nodoka Dekihara learned from an early age about the history of the atomic bombing and peace. As her interest in the wider world deepened through studying abroad and international exchanges, she joined a UNITAR digital storytelling training programme to explore new possibilities for communicating messages of peace.