28 July 2000

Pristina, Kosovo: More than half of the 400 registration supervisors fielded by the United Nations Volunteers programme (UNV) in Kosovo to carry out voter registration ending last week will remain in the province to help prepare municipal elections in October and register Kosovar children.

UN Volunteers constituted 80 per cent of the Joint Registration Taskforce of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). They played an important role in the three-month process in which just over a million people were registered in Kosovo along with an additional 150,000 Kosovars in neighbouring Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro.

The actual population of Kosovo is estimated at 1.9 million, with 1.2 million people -- 65 per cent -- aged 16 and older and thus eligible for registration.

UNV specialists set up and monitored mobile or fixed registration centres in the field and worked with the taskforce's senior management team. UN Volunteers compiled the registrants' biographical data, photographs and fingerprints. "Without them," noted UNV Programme Manager attached to UNMIK, Margaux van de Fliert, "the operation would simply not have taken place."

Sharon Capeling-Alakija, Executive Coordinator of the Bonn-based UNV programme, congratulated the UNV registration supervisors for their "excellent" contribution "to the fulfillment of the mission's mandate".

After meeting several of them while in Kosovo in April, she said she was immensely impressed with the volunteers' "professional capacities, principle of solidarity and spirit of volunteerism".

These 400 UN Volunteers are part of a total group of 700 serving with UNMIK. More than 200 others work in the area of civil administration and carry out about 60 different functions. They work in fields as diverse as legal assistance, penal management, finance, agriculture, administration, education, architecture/reconstruction, civil affairs, information technology, culture, environmental protection, gender, NGO liaison, labour, procurement, media, resource management, salary administration, sports, statistics, telecommunications, and youth. One UNV is the co-director of the Youth Department and another heads Kosovo's Vehicle Registration Unit.

Apart from UNV's involvement in UNMIK, about 20 UN Volunteers work with UN agencies to support humanitarian assistance and reconstruction efforts. UNV's major partners in these activities are the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

At present, Kosovo is UNV's largest operation, followed by East Timor where close to 350 UN Volunteers are currently serving. Some 130 additional UNV specialists are to arrive in East Timor by the end of August.