DR. JACOB L SIMET pays tribute to the late Regina Kati who as Secretary General of the National Commission for UNESCO worked tirelessly to have the Kuk Agricultural site in the Western Highlands Province nominated for the World Heritage List.

“She served with dignity and humility. She did not seek praise and publicity. She shied away from the limelight and the accolades.
She was a woman who held her own amongst men and had to be reckoned with. In Highlands society, she was a woman who became a man, as she took on many responsibilities which were manly shouldered by men. Regina knew the meaning of diplomacy as she was herself a great diplomat”.
The above is part of a number of eulogies and tributes made at the funeral service of the former Secretary General of the Papua New Guinea National Commission for UNESCO; Ms Regina Kati, at the St. Peter’s Channel Catholic Church, at Erima on December 28.
Without wanting to be disrespectful, in this story I will call her Regina rather than “the late Regina”.
According to a woman friend who presented a dedication, Regina Kati came from the Banz district in the Western Highlands province, where she grew up and went to school. During her time, females going to school in this part of the country was a daring step, thus she was one of the very few women who went to school.
After completing some years of secondary education in Banz Regina left her Highlands homeland for the coast, to attend Yarapos high school, in the East Sepik province.
She then entered training college to become a teacher, after which she taught for some years. She took up other jobs within the Education Department before becoming the Secretary General of the National Commission for UNESCO.
Those who delivered the eulogies highlighted a number of different aspects of Regina’s life and work.
The lady friend highlighted the struggles that Regina went through in the early part of her life, after her parents died when she was only five years old.
As a result she was a struggler and a fighter, an orphan who had to make do with what she was given and also as a female daring to be educated “out” of Highlands male dominated society.
A Department of Education spokesperson highlighted her struggle to establish the National Commission for UNESCO as an autonomous body; taking it away from under the wings of the Department of Education.
This was a feat which others before her had unsuccessfully attempted.
Through her efforts the National Executive Council (NEC) granted this in August of 2007. The President of the PEA spoke about Regina’s long years of contribution to that organization and how she stood up to anyone including male adversaries.
It was the Director of the National Research Institute who spoke about Regina’s commitment to the nomination of the Kuk Agricultural site, in the Western Highlands Province, for the World Heritage List.
He highlighted her commitment to have this project completed, despite many years of delay, lack of funding and a mountain of setbacks associated with it.
I know of Regina’s struggles to have the NATCOM achieve autonomous status.
She simply put her head down on this until the results came.
I also know a little of her involvement with the PEA and was able to visualize this stocky built Banz woman holding her own in the face of adversities.
However, I am more familiar with her commitment to the nomination of the Kuk Agricultural site for World Heritage Listing, as this was a project which was well within the National Cultural Commission’s domain.
Regina’s commitment to the Kuk Agricultural site nomination on the World Heritage listing related to her commitment to the UNESCO World Heritage Convention of 1972.
She did not necessarily know the technicalities which justified the nomination but she knew that Kuk was important because it had a number of criteria which made it important to humanity, one of these being that it held evidence of early sedentary agricultural practices by our ancestors.
Admittedly she took some pride in the thought that this site was in her home province, but at the same time took great pride in telling others that this site was in Papua New Guinea.
Over and above all this she had a commitment to that UNESCO ideal about creating international peace through instilling a culture of peace in the minds of men and women. For her, these were strong incentives for Kuk to be nominated for World Heritage listing, despite the adversities.
Regina sometimes pointed out the global representation imbalance on the World Heritage List. She was aware that the List was dominated mainly by sites from certain areas of the, such as Europe and North America.
Developing countries were poorly represented on this List.
In our region, the Pacific was very poorly represented. At the time of her passing, the Pacific which has sixteen UNESCO member states and territories; had only one site on the List; a site in the Solomon Islands.
Thus she wanted Kuk to be the second Pacific site on the List.
Two stories epitomized her commitment that Kuk be inscribed on the World Heritage List.
In 1998 I arrived late at a meeting to find a roomful of men with Regina being the sole female and chairing (or at least trying to) the meeting.
A heated argument was in motion between a number of parties present.
Amongst those present were a number of Government Departmental and Statutory Body heads, and including highly technical people ( a few with PhDs) who were working on the Kuk site.
In the beginning she looked helpless and seemed unable to control these “heavies” and highly learned men, some of whom were thumping different ends of the table.
After a few minutes however; with her persistent soft voice and knowing and almost sneaky smile, she was able to take control of the meting. In disagreement with the conduct of the earlier part of this meeting I left very early and Regina knew why.
After the meeting she called me to apologize for the conduct of the meeting and said that the work on Kuk had to continue.
She said that I should come for the next meeting, however I never attended another meeting for the next few years.
By the end of 2004, the work on Kuk began to grind down to snail pace.
A number of deadlines for the nomination had been missed and most of the funding provided by UNESCO for this project had been used up.
In early 2005 Regina rang me to raise her concerns about Kuk and pleaded that the work be moved forward.
Understandably she was under pressure from the World Heritage Center in Paris.
However she seemed to be more concerned about the loss of opportunity to PNG and the Pacific, if the nomination of Kuk was not done.
For the long term she was also concerned about the World Heritage Committee closing its doors to PNG and the Pacific if the deadlines were not met.
She said that she came to me because she thought I knew some of the technical people who had worked on Kuk over the years; and she was right.
From this persistent approach, we re-started the work on Kuk until its final nomination in September 2006 for World Heritage Listing. We are now waiting for the results.
Through Regina’s efforts, the NEC approved the autonomous status of the PNG National Commission for UNESCO in 2007. Unfortunately she will not be here to be present at its launching and possibly to be given the chance of being the first Secretary General to this new organization.
The years of struggle of the PEA on behalf of its members are now just beginning to bear fruit.
Unfortunately Regina will not be here to share these results.
The nomination of Kuk is now in the hands of the World Heritage Committee.
If this nomination is successful, it will be a first for PNG and second for the Pacific.
Unfortunately, Regina will not be here to celebrate with us when we achieve that milestone.
However, those of us who worked with her on this project will most definitely remember her on this occasion, for persistence and dedication.

 

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