Marcela Villarreal
Chief of Population and Development Service, Gender and Population Division
Food and Agriculture Organization
The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) operates a range of programs aiming to enhance food security and rural development. Marcela Villarreal heads the Population and Development Service, part of the Gender and Population Division that assesses the impact of population issues and in particular the HIV and AIDS epidemic on agricultural development.
The Population and Development Service assesses a range of issues that relate to gender aspects of rural resource use and management; agricultural division of labor; land tenure in rural societies; and access to reproductive and productive resources. Marcela's work relates to the impact of the HIV / AIDS epidemic on rural development, food security and rural livelihoods. "The epidemic has depleted the agricultural labor force." She explained. "This reduces the number of people able to produce food, plus these families need to spend more on health care, so their overall quality of life is greatly reduced."
As Chief of the Service, Marcela is responsible for ensuring the mainstreaming of HIV / AIDS considerations into the work of all the technical divisions of the FAO, and to ensure that the staff in these divisions have the necessary knowledge and competence to integrate HIV / AIDS in to their work. "It is a big challenge to make people understand that this epidemic is changing the nature of their work, and will have an impact on the projects themselves, and their budgets. It is first an issue of understanding, and then one of how to go about incorporating this into their projects." Marcela asserted. She joined the FAO as a Senior Officer Socio-Cultural Research in September 1996. She was attracted to the field after seeing the effects the epidemic causes to communities. She told us, "the moment you go to rural Africa and you see the devastation that the epidemic is creating, one realizes that you can make a real difference. Then you say to yourself 'I have something to do and we have to move things as fast as we can'."
Marcela has an eclectic background, graduating in both Computer Engineering and Anthropology in Colombia before moving to the USA to study a PhD in Rural Sociology, an educational experience that laid the groundwork for her current position. "What we are doing is research, looking at how the agricultural sector can help to reduce the impact of HIV and AIDS on rural communities. Some think that it is purely a health issue, but given the impact it has on food security, the FAO has an important role. Agricultural is the engine of development in rural areas." She explained.
Marcela's future plans are to expand the work of the department beyond Southern Africa, where they currently operate, to cover a larger geographical area. "We want to expand our work to all agricultural sectors, to cover the range of effects of the epidemic on agriculture and very specifically start work on agricultural policy issues." She confirmed.
