15 June 2004

Bonn, Germany: A record number of 5,635 mid-career professionals served with the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme in 2003 to promote peace, relief and development initiatives through volunteer action.

According to Opening Doors, UNV's Annual Report for 2003, UN Volunteers representing 162 nationalities worked in 144 nations and countries in economic transition. Over 70 per cent were from developing countries, serving at home or abroad to foster South-South cooperation.

Carrying out 5,832 individual assignments, they continued in key activities to reduce poverty helping to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of time-bound and measurable goals and targets to combat poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women.

UN Volunteers extended the reach of poverty reduction programmes. They formed voluntary support groups for people with disabilities. They helped enlist youth volunteers for development. They harnessed community volunteering to combat urban violence. They engaged in new strategies to ensure the provision of key social services in an HIV/AIDS era. They helped information-poor communities benefit from information technologies. They supported local measures to preserve the environment. They helped government authorities and communities distribute relief and implement rehabilitation measures in the aftermath of natural disasters.

They empowered local people through decentralization and governance projects and supported electoral processes, peace-building and peacekeeping. Last year, large numbers of UN Volunteers took up assignments within United Nations missions in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea and Ethiopia, Guatemala, Ivory Coast, Kosovo, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Timor-Leste.

Additionally, thousands of Online Volunteers (making their skills available through the Internet), university graduates, private sector employees, or retirees engage in new opportunities to volunteer for development opened by UNV.

"With its mission to promote volunteerism for development and to mobilize volunteers, the UNV programme is committed to create an enabling environment for volunteerism at local, national and international levels," said UNV Executive Coordinator a.i., Ad de Raad. "Time and again, volunteers reach far beyond our expectations and help us take major steps forward. Volunteers are global citizens and there are scores of opportunities for them to engage in."

In the follow-up to the International Year of Volunteers (IYV) 2001, UNV continued to work with the UN system, governments, non-governmental organizations and communities alike to further promote voluntary action globally. The WorldVolunteerWeb launched to take forward gains made during IYV, through expanded networking and knowledge management, has established itself as a global Internet volunteer resource base – and now provides thousands of visitors with information on opportunities to contribute to achieving the MDGs. A total of 125 countries marked 5 December 2003 - International Volunteer Day – with activities to promote volunteerism and to mobilize local volunteer action for specific development priorities, including the MDGs.

"I strongly believe that volunteerism is fundamental to global development, even more so today as we work towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals," said Mark Malloch Brown, Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), in his foreword to the report. "Through initiatives such as the WorldVolunteerWeb and International Volunteer Day, UN Volunteers continue to demonstrate their immense value as true partners in achieving the MDGs."

Since starting its operations in 1971, the Bonn-based UNV programme has mobilized tens of thousands of UN Volunteers to work primarily in the areas of community-based development, humanitarian relief, electoral and peace-building processes and development cooperation. UN Volunteers have a university education or advanced technical training as well as several years of work experience. Most of the UN Volunteers are recruited to work for requesting UN agencies, governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).