The United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) was established in July 1999. Following an agreement between the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations (UNDPKO) and UNV, 300 UN Volunteers were soon deployed in Kosovo to support UNMIK's mandate. As the political situation evolved to include a need to organize elections, UNMIK asked UNV to recruit an additional 400 UN Volunteers to organize voter registration of a million people. This exercise, carried out in cooperation with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), paved the way for municipal elections in October 2000.

Throughout the past year, UN Volunteers worked among divided communities helping to create the trust required for peace to work in Kosovo. Today their work continues in the communities of every municipality and region around Kosovo. A few of their responsibilities are to provide legal assistance and stress counselling, protect the environment, build ties among local groups and supply administrative support in courts and prisons. One volunteer has an unusual but important job as a train driver, ensuring that the train service from Kosovo Polje to Zvecan continues, to serve all communities in Kosovo. Other volunteers are assigned to the various departments established by the mission, to work on other essential issues such as promotion of culture, improving education, health and social welfare and agriculture.

A key aspect of the UN Volunteers' work is in helping with production and distribution of travel documents due the destruction of identification papers and registries throughout Kosovo during early 1999. Since 27 January 2001, when UNMIK distributed the first travel documents issued to Kosovars, UN Volunteers have produced an estimated 700,000 identification cards and until recently have helped distribute these throughout Kosovo. Today there are 225 UN Volunteers working with UNMIK. This number is set to increase shortly by another 41 UNVs who will take up the important task of carrying out minority registration. The Volunteers work in over 80 functional categories under 20 different departments and units of UNMIK. They represent 66 different nationalities: 35 per cent come from Africa, 28 per cent from Asia Pacific, 24 per cent from Europe, 23 per cent from the Americas and the Caribbean and two per cent from Arab states. Some 31 per cent of the volunteers are women.

In addition to their assistance to the people of Kosovo, through UNMIK, 26 other UN Volunteers carry out their work with several agencies in the field of humanitarian assistance and reconstruction. One of these UN Volunteers works with the Village Employment and Rehabilitation project run by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), in the divided city of Mitrovica. The UNV manages a multi-cultural centre, where ethnic Serbs and Albanians begin to reconcile and work together. Another UN Volunteer offers his skills as a doctor in a maternity hospital in the remote area of Gllogovc. UNV's major partners in these activities are UNDP, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS). In the past two years, UN Volunteers have also contributed to the work of the World Food Programme (WFP) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM).