01 January 1999

Gaza/West Bank: To celebrate the International Volunteer Day (IVD) in the Palestinian Territories the United Nations Volunteers programme (UNV) in consultation with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP decided to gather all serving national and international UN Volunteers in the West Bank and Gaza.

Due to the complex political situation and the geographical partition of the Palestinian Territory, it is complicated for Palestinians working in Gaza to travel the estimated 80 kilometres to the West Bank. Moreover, Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip need permission from the Israeli authority to travel to the West Bank. The UNV programme has been growing significantly in the past couple of years and most of the UNVs scattered in the Territories have not had an opportunity to meet. Indeed the IVD celebration was the first time ever that all UNVs in Palestine were gathered for an exchange of experiences.

In December 1999, there were about 30 national and 30 international UNVs serving in the Palestinian Territories. They work in different sectors, such as urban planning, children's rights, gender, conflict resolution, human rights, health and education. Twenty UNVs are based in Gaza and the rest in the West Bank.

The IVD gathering was held at the UNDP Jerusalem office. The day's events were opened by UNDP Special Representative Timothy Rothermel who spoke on UNDP's interest in and support of the UNV programme in the Palestinian Territories.

UNV Programme Manager Jean-Luc Bories then commented on the upcoming International Year of Volunteers 2001 (IYV 2001), highlighting its objectives and stressing that UNV and UN Volunteers should start planning now to celebrate the Year for and about volunteers.

Later, Barbara Hansen, a former UNV in Poland who is now working with the World Food Programme, described how she had been involved as early as 1996 in New York in lobbying for the year 2001 to be declared as IYV. She told the IYV history and described the preparatory work done for such a decision to be taken by the UN General Assembly in November 1997.

Her comments were followed by a presentation by Ms. Firyal Hassouneh, the national representative of the International Association for Voluntary Effort (IAVE). She spoke on IAVE's activities locally and worldwide and described joint collaboration of IAVE and UNV on preparing IYV 2001.

The afternoon was dedicated to the exchange of experiences between UNVs working on different projects. There were two presentations from the White Helmets teams working on urban planning in Bethlehem and on support to vulnerable groups in Gaza and the West Bank.

Different representatives of donor countries such as Belgium, Japan, Argentina, Spain and Italy were represented as well as other UN agencies hosting UNVs. These included the World Health Organization, the United Nations Childrens Fund, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. At the end of the afternoon a luncheon was served for the guests, who carried on networking and exchanging ideas in a friendly and relaxed manner.