After my visit to the United Nations to participate in the 69th annual Commission on the Status of Women conference in March 2025, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to interview Lisa Doughten, the Director of the Financing and Partnerships Division at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Ms. Doughten's career at the United Nations spans almost twenty years, and she has been working in humanitarian affairs and development for even longer than that. Her expertise and wealth of knowledge related to current affairs and global issues was immediately clear from the start of our conversation, and she shared a great deal about her own experiences as well as some of the UN's current initiatives. 

As I am from Japan, I was curious to hear Ms. Doughten's perspective on my country's contributions to global humanitarian efforts. She was kind enough to share figures from her own database showing Japan's increasing contributions: while in 2011 Japan gave 610 million dollars towards humanitarian action, it doubled that number last year (2024) with 1.2 billion dollars. At its peak, Japan contributed 1.8 billion dollars in 2022, specifically focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine. I was very glad to hear that Japan has a reputation for involvement in and commitment to humanitarian affairs and security. I also learned about the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the Japanese government agency responsible for development assistance worldwide.