In August 2018, at age 47, between 200 candidates was chosen for CEO of Sanitation and Water for All, a partnership of the United Nations, known by the English acronym SWA (Sanitation and Water for All).
The appointment was worth a seat towards UNICEF in New York, the highest position held by a Portuguese in that body, in the last decades. For Catarina de Albuquerque there was no impossible. There was never.
When he was in Portugal, he was the mother who arrived at the house early and spent as much time as possible with her two children and her husband, and when she was absent from her family, she put her hands in the dough and entered the most deplorable and inhospitable places. He did not admit not to know reality, because he believed that only then could he work better.
Anyone who talked to her couldn’t feel enthusiastic, because for the jurist there was nothing that was not realized: I just need to know who to talk to, the right way and the data – and her experience in the places – to ensure the right way.
He was so comfortable in remote Tuvalu as in the Cosmopolita New York and that is why they heard it: because they knew that Catarina would talk to those who needed, from any country, sector, position to secure their intentions. And who knew what he said, because he made a point of experiencing him.
For her, the right to access to water was something so obvious that it was always repeating the same sentence, in a summary, so that there were no doubt to those who heard it: “There are studies that show that for each euro invested in access to water and sanitation, the gains are, on average, 7 euros”. The evidence was often accompanied with one more smile and a suggestive shrugging.
He hit equality in access to water and sanitation, criticized male power in the high spheres – “Last week someone told me that I didn’t hear a phrase I heard if it wasn’t a woman,” he said in the same interview with Forbes in 2016 – And he was never intimidated by the way he was, not rarely looked at, not only for being a woman, but also for being Portuguese. He has always praised the diplomatic capacity of our country, and often pointed out António Guterres and João Vale de Almeida as examples of personalities that incorporate this Portuguese way to reach high positions, through dialogue and cooperation.
It remembered Portugal’s privileged position that, not being large, is a country known to want to create bridges and generate consensus, which, admitted, made life easier several times.