ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE AND LEADERSHIP
UNV headquarters are in Bonn, Germany. UNV has around 150 staff members at headquarters, and over 10,921 UN Volunteers deployed in the field in 2021.
Mr Toily Kurbanov (Russian Federation) is the Executive Coordinator of UNV, and took up his appointment on 4 January 2021.
UNV aims to enhance and deepen engagement with academia, research institutions and civil society, civic society, volunteer experts and researchers to promote a global conversation about the role of volunteerism in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
UNV thanks its UN Member State partners for their generous contributions in support of volunteerism for sustainable development and peace and counts on their continued support. UNV's Annual Report 2022 contains further details. Interested partners are invited to read more about how to support UNV financially, including through our Special Voluntary Fund and Full Funding Programme.
For the past 25 years, UN Volunteers have supported peace processes in multiple societies and countries in complex political transitions around the world.
Over 14,000 UN Volunteers have been deployed to support peace processes in more than 40 different peacekeeping and political UN missions, as well as UN peacebuilding offices around the world.
Funding partners may choose to sponsor nationals of their own country or those of other nationalities to contribute their skills and talents for peace and development.
UN Volunteers contribute to key UN projects and functions at country and regional level, and address some of the most pressing peace and development challenges around the world.
In 2022, some 736 fully funded UN Volunteers around the world. Of these, 72 per cent were women, 52 per cent were UN Youth and University Volunteers and 12 per cent persons with disabilities.
Volunteers are motivated by values like those of justice, equality and freedom as expressed in the United Nations Charter. A society which supports and encourages different forms of volunteering is likely to be a society which also promotes the well-being of its citizens.
Once primarily a provider of volunteers to the United Nations (UN) system in support of programme countries, UNV has evolved in terms of the size and spread of its mandate, results and activities, driven by the changing external environment for peace, development and the eradication of poverty, by the wider acknowledgment of the role of volunteerism globally and by intergovernmental legislation.
Executive Board decision 2006/18 confirmed UNV’s business model, leading to UNV being operational in three domains:
The United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme has evolved greatly over the past 50 years in terms of the size and spread of its mandate, results and activities, driven by the changing external environment for peace, development and the eradication of poverty, by the wider acknowledgment of the role of volunteerism globally and by intergovernmental legislation.
In 2006, the UNDP/UNFPA/UNOPS Executive Board confirmed UNV’s business model, leading to UNV being operational in three domains:
Volunteerism, as a form of civic participation, can be a powerful mechanism for giving youth a voice in decision making and promoting social inclusion in environmental governance within the post-2015 development framework.
Nairobi, Kenya: The transition from the year 2015 to the year 2016 marked a remarkable moment in environmental governance for sustainable development globally. The world gained a set of universally agreed development goals, a financing for development agreement, and even more critical for the global environment, the Paris climate change agreement that finally promised to cap global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius.