08 November 2004

Maastricht, Netherlands: Dear Madame chair, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Let me begin by saying what a pleasure it is to have been invited to join today’s opening plenary session of this unique Eurofestation event here in Maastricht.

Some of you may ask what the United Nations Volunteers programme is doing in a conference that concerns itself in the first place with volunteering within the European Union itself. Why a UNV programme that makes itself in the first place strong for volunteerism and volunteering for development of countries and people in the South.

Let me explain.

We live in an increasingly inter-connected and inter-dependent world. Any debate on European issues impacts in one way or another on events beyond the region. So UNV being here has everything to do with making the case that we should not be blind to the fact that many of the issues covered at this Conference are equally relevant to poor countries and societies of the developing world. It is about making sure that what often seems to be a “blind spot” becomes a “hot spot”.

My remarks this morning will therefore focus on making the connection, through the lense of the needs of those countries and people in the South, and the power of properly supported and adequately resourced volunteerism to tackling the very sigificant problems they face.

A starting point perhaps is the International Year of Volunteers in 2001. The Year reminded us all that volunteering is not a preserve of rich societies. Rather, voluntary action in one form or another is present in every country, in every society.

The sum total of volunteer action that takes place through NGOs, government programmes, and company volunteering schemes, through local mutual aid or self-help association, and through activist movement advocating for social change - is vast. IYV was enormously effective in enhancing recognition of the power, both social and economic, of such action and engagement by citizens.

But it went a lot further than that. By the end of IYV governments collectively, through resolutions of the UN General Assembly, accepted that volunteering needs to be actively nourished and promoted, not only in the North but also in the South. Indeed, agreement was reached on a set of priority actions which governments and other stakeholders could take to ensure that the potential of volunteering is fully realized.

We now have, as a context for implementing these actions, the Millennium Development Goals or MDGs with their measurable targets and specific time frames adopted at the UN Millenneum Summit in 2000 by 189 Heads of State and Governments. To remind ourselves, the eight MDGs include reducing by half absolute poverty that is represented by 1.2 billion people around the world struggling to survive on less than US$ 1 a day; ensuring environmental sustainability; achieving universal primary education; promoting gender equality; reducing child mortality; improving maternal health; and combating HIV/AIDS and other diseases. The eigth and final MDG, directed at industrialized countries, is about debt, trade and the financial system, and aid flows.

UNV is the focal point in the United Nations for follow-up to IYV. We are deeply engaged, together with partners and stakeholders, in helping to ensure that the contribution of volunteerism to the achievement of the MDGs is maximized. In carrying out this role we have been struck time and time again by the missing link in the puzzle – what we might call a “blind spot”. Put bluntly, the recognition that countries in the North afford to volunteering and volunteerism at home is still largely absent when those same countries consider their responsibilities towards assisting countries in the developing world.

Statistics such as the 25 million people who volunteer in the UK contributing 21 billion pounds to GDP or the 4 million Dutch who volunteer annually through over 200.000 associations are well known in volunteer circles in the rich countries. How often have we heard that parks and museums, sports clubs and homeless people centres would all have to severely curtail their services if volunteers downed tools and went home? There is extensive research, courses are held for volunteer managers, volunteer centres set up, parliamentary white papers prepared, and conferences like Eurofestation organized.

But similar phenomena occur in the poor countries, even if it they are not always referred to as volunteering. The neighbourhood group that forms to patrol streets to ensure safety at night, the women that band together to build a day care centre for village children, the youth who form a club to address the needs of less fortunate young people, the community members who establish a pressure group to stop the building of a dam which will flood their fields - .all are forms of volunteering. They are, if you like, the ultimate safety net for people who cannot depend on their earnings or on support from the State to ensure that very basic needs are met.

Yet to the extent that we are aware of such efforts, we in the North tend to dismiss them as contributions in kind – what the poor have to contribute to earn the (quote) “generosity” of donor funding.

To be fair, the last Annual Development Cooperation Report of the DAC countries for 2003 does indeed refer to the importance for development of social capital, of which volunteering is such an important part, and new forms of partnership and shared responsibility. But sadly that is as far as it goes.

The notion that citizen voluntary action is an essential ingredient for reaching agreed development goals in the South, and that such action needs to be supported if it is to realize its full potential, is not on the radar screen of either bilateral or EU ODA policy and programmes. Even if donor countries were to meet their commitment of 0, 7% of GDP going to ODA by 2015, enormous efforts will still be required on the part of citizen voluntary action to attain the other MDGs and to ensure sustainability of results obtained.

So I believe there is a serious disconnect here. While there is much debate in rich countries of the North about official policy towards domestic volunteering, at least voluntary action by citizens is widely recognized and valued as making a significant societal contribution.

On the other hand, volunteering in the poor regions of the South tends to be invisible to donor countries and as a consequence official development aid policies to support and nourish this resource are largely absent.

There are some things participants in this conference can do to help bridge the perception gap.

First, those working in government should consider their own country’s overseas aid policies and ask themselves why the enormous contribution of volunteerism on the domestic front is overlooked in international development policies - and consider what can be done about it.

Members of civil society groups should lobby their parliamentary representatives to get volunteering on to the aid agenda. And representatives from the private sector should ask themselves what more they can do to channel a part of their own resources to encourage the mobilization of voluntary action in the developing world.

I would like to say a few words about the private sector. The challenges faced by the developing world cannot be resolved by governments alone. Enlightened public-private partnerships are an essential complement to ODA policies of donor countries. In this respect, the growing interest of the private sector in corporate social responsibility, or CSR, is of enormous importance. The organizers of Eurofestation are to be applauded for having had the vision to combine under one roof the themes of volunteering and CSR. It is a formula which sends out a very powerful message about the opportunities for collaboration.

The UNV programme is fully committed to advocating for a greater role for the private sector in development. We have indeed formulated a number of volunteer-based initiatives for companies to participate actively through partnership and by promoting opportunities for the involvement of company employees as volunteers to help address the huge problems and opportunities encountered in the developing world. And let me make it clear, not as a one-way street, but rather as a win-win proposition.

Local and national volunteer polices are at the center of this conference. Recognizing however the inter-connected and inter-dependent nature of our world to which I referred to at the beginning, we must not turn our backs on expressions of volunteerism in other, less privileged, regions. I am optimistic. The European Union and member countries are committed to the delivery of effective overseas development aid. And, in this light, it makes perfect sense to build in the volunteer dimension. Your work and contributions during this Eurofestation can help to make the difference, the make the “blind spot” a “hot spot”. I therefore hope that there will be opportunities over the course of the next two days to consider the international aspect of volunteering and to have this reflected in the proposals that come out of this conference.

Thank you.