How does a story begin?

A journalist might say it starts with an event. A communicator might point to an interview, a photograph, or a headline. But after my recent mission to Nepal, I found myself wondering whether the best stories begin long before anyone realizes they are stories at all.

Most people will never read the reports that shape decisions at the United Nations. Fewer still will know who helped produce them. Yet behind nearly every recommendation, policy adjustment, or programme improvement lies a simple question: Did it work?

For Liza Al Bag, a UN Volunteer from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq serving with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva, answering that question has become her daily mission.

As part of OHCHR's Strategic Planning, Programme Management, Evaluation and Change Service (SPECS), she works on evaluations that examine some of today's most urgent human rights issues, from civic space and digital rights to business and human rights, technical cooperation, and the protection of human rights defenders and journalists.

Growing up under the apartheid regime in South Africa, the systematic humiliation of black South Africans was all around us. I know many of my white South African colleagues say they did not see what was happening but for me, it was obvious. Even at school, I had already developed very strong feelings about apartheid and its lack of justification.

What happens when you travel halfway around the world to change lives and end up changing your own?

For Runnan Shao and Shinya Abe, the answer unfolded in Malawi. Arriving from different corners of Asia as international UN Volunteers with the World Food Programme (WFP) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), both came ready to contribute their expertise. Instead, they discovered that some of their most important lessons would be personal ones.

After days, sometimes weeks, of fleeing violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), families arrive at Busuma refugee site carrying what little they could save. Children fall asleep on mats laid on bare ground. Parents stay awake, listening to the wind and wondering what tomorrow will bring. In those moments, something as simple as a roof can mean everything. A shelter cannot erase what has been lost. But it can offer a family a place to close a door, protect their children from the rain, and take the first breath of safety in a long time.

For the more than 66,000 Congolese refugees hosted at Busuma in eastern Burundi, that need remains urgent. As new arrivals continue to cross the border and others return home, the population shifts constantly. Yet one reality endures: every family deserves a place to begin again.