The meeting, which included COP31 Climate High-Level Champion Samed Ağırbaş and Louise Chamberlain, UNV Deputy Executive Coordinator, focused on the priorities of both organizations and on ways to align efforts around the International Volunteer Year 2026.
Climate High-Level Champions and Zero Waste Foundation visit UNV headquarters in Bonn
Executive Coordinator presents UNV 2025 results to the Executive Board
Toily Kurbanov, Executive Coordinator of United Nations Volunteers (UNV) presented the 2025 Annual Report of the Administrator at the Executive Board in New York on 10 June 2026. The Executive Board consists of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS).
Mr. Chair,
Distinguished delegates,
This is the fifth time I have the privilege of presenting the annual report of UNV to the Executive Board.
First time when I was presenting in 2021, I was given 20 minutes to allow more time for dialogue among the Member States. The following year, it became 15 minutes, then 10, and now I have only five. I look forward to the challenge the board will set for me next year.
UNEG-UNV Partnership for Young and Emerging Evaluators
The UNEG-UNV Young and Emerging Evaluators (YEE) programme began in 2024 with its first cohort, including 10 UN Volunteer assignments in 8 countries. These volunteers were at an early stage in their careers and under the age of 35. Of these, 50 percent were women.
Capturing the Full Value of Volunteering in Crisis Contexts
Numbers are not enough. Measuring volunteering must go beyond hours and activities to show real change in people’s lives, communities and support systems.
The webinar opened with remarks by Olga Zubritskaya-Devyatkina, UNV Regional Manager for Arab States, and was facilitated by Professor Matt Baillie Smith and Dr Bianca Fadel of Northumbria University. Drawing on Chapter 6 of the 2026 State of the World’s Volunteerism Report, it brought together researchers and practitioners from crisis-affected contexts.
If Solidarity Is The Principle, Volunteering Is Its Discipline
Late in the evening, after the desks have emptied, a volunteer stays behind at a reception centre to help a family fill out forms in a language they do not yet command. No one records the moment. Yet for that family, something shifts. The world, which had narrowed, opens a little again.
This is how solidarity begins. Not as an abstraction, but as an act.
Our age has no shortage of upheaval. Displacement today is not episodic; it is widespread. Conflicts endure, climates shift, and fragile systems strain under repeated shocks. In such a world, sympathy alone is insufficient. It must be organized, sustained, and given direction. Solidarity must become service.