The universality of human experience

One of the most cherished gifts I received soon after taking over my duties in the Philippines, a bit over a year ago, was a beautifully designed, purple-covered book: “Women in Diplomacy. The Remarkable Ambassadors of the Philippine Foreign Service.” It is a collective book, published in 2019, edited by the former Foreign Affairs secretary, Delia Domingo Albert.

Ambassador Albert is also the last career diplomat to reach the position of head of the Philippines diplomacy before the current holder of the post, The Hon. Enrique Manalo. Ever since, Ambassador Delia Domingo Albert has been an inspiration for me. I was happy to join the ranks of many women all over the world who look up to her as a role model.

Women in Diplomacy is a book of testimonies by Filipina current and former ambassadors about their diplomatic careers. After the first pages, I began to read it voraciously, interested in every line, page and life-lesson included in this volume. For me the book was, as they say nowadays, unputdownable. This book speaks like no other about my own experiences over a long diplomatic career.

Also, the book highlights an unsung trait of Philippine diplomacy, the constant quest for gender equality. Since 1946, over 110 women of the Philippines Foreign Service have had the chance to act as ambassadors of their country. Researches will tell us but to me and many of my fellow-ambassadors based in Manila, this seems to be close to a world-record.

It is telling that, when opening relations with Romania, in 1972, the first ambassador sent by the Philippines to Bucharest was a lady: Leticia Ramos Shahani. One of the young diplomats she recruited for her team in order to set up the embassy in Bucharest was the now ambassador Delia Domingo Albert.

In 2022, in our groups of Romanian women-ambassadors, we were discussing ways in which we could honor the anniversary of 160 years since the establishment of the Romanian Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Many ideas sprung out of these discussions. One of them has already come to fruition: We have published and launched, on March 17, 2023, our own beautiful volume of testimonies of women’s diplomatic experiences, titled “Women’s Voices in the Romanian diplomacy.”

It is enlightening to read the two books in parallel. Though we, women-ambassadors from the Philippines and Romania, generally do not know each other, our experiences are similar, the difficulties encountered are identical, the efforts, obstacles and reactions to challenges are the same. Also identical, energizing and unique is the extraordinary satisfaction that we, as diplomats, experience when we succeed to do something meaningful for our countries and our nationals.

The universality of human experiences is the basis of our global society. Religions are founded on it. Our interactions across borders are possible because of it. The spread of culture banks on it. Our international organizations, the UN as the only organization with universal vocation in particular, are founded on the universality of everything that pertains to humans.

However, few things are so revealing and thrilling as witnessing the universality of human experiences at micro-level, at the level of individual lives lived and lessons learned, while reading about similar experiences in different locations and time. This is amazing and heartwarming.

A couple of days ago, a Filipino diplomatic delegation had high-level political consultations with their counterparts in Bucharest. I keep looking at the photos taken on this occasion: The gender equality around the table is nearly perfect. Does it matter? It really matters. This is a guarantee that during the political consultations, all our concerns are taken into account and discussed, whether we are traders, actual or potential investors, OFWs or members of an OFW family, diplomats or just ordinary citizens. Gender equality and its corollary, the complementarity of approaches, work in our favor, for all of us, as citizens, and for all nations.

In Romania, the Philippines and all over the world, we are continuing the efforts to uplift women, to empower them, to create the conditions in which they can thrive and fulfill their potential. If we succeed, we shall make the world a better place for the next generations.

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R?du?a Dana Matache is the Ambassador of Romania to the Philippines.