Nelson Mandela International Day is celebrated every year on July 18 based on a 2009 United Nations General Assembly resolution. This recognized Mandela's values and dedication, including service to humanity in conflict resolution, race relations and the promotion and protection of human rights. In December 2015, the General Assembly expanded the scope of Nelson Mandela International Day to promote humane prison conditions, raise awareness of prisoners as part of society and value the social services provided by prison staff.

"My father and his family were forcefully displaced from Palestine to Jordan in 1948 when the state of Israel was established. My mother and maternal family fled from Palestine to Jordan during the Six Day War in 1967, this has inspired me to pursue a humanitarian career in service of refugees in particular," she says.

In times of crisis, volunteers are among the first to take critical action at the frontlines. Under the UNV-UNDP Tandem Teams, national and international volunteers are supporting UNDP country offices in responding not just to the pandemic, but also natural hazards and human-induced crises.  

Their presence contributes towards the gender mainstreaming strategy of the United Nations system, which integrates the experiences of women in the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes, with the aim of ensuring gender equality.

Nepal’s climate is strongly influenced by its topography, which varies greatly from the high altitudes of the Himalayan mountain range in the northwest to the lowlands in the southeast. The lowland regions of Nepal have a warm and humid sub‐tropical climate. Its people are largely engaged in climate sensitive and subsistence livelihoods with low adaptive capacity, thus vulnerable to climate change.

I joined UNDP's Regional Bureau for the Arab States in Egypt as a UN Youth Volunteer Gender Security Training Associate in April 2020. In 2021, I extended my assignment as a UN Volunteer specialist until March 2022, also funded by the Government of Finland. 

According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), one in every 78 people on earth is now displaced.

Over the past five months, I have had the privilege to serve with UNMISS as a volunteer. I support a diverse and passionate team of peacekeepers who create a secure environment for the voluntary and dignified return and reintegration of internally displaced persons and refugees displaced during South Sudan’s civil war, or more recently due to climate-induced disasters and inter-communal clashes.

Since 2007, more than 95 UN Volunteers have been engaged with OCHA in Latin America and the Caribbean and 30 in Europe and Central Asia. In Ukraine, OCHA successfully used UN Volunteers to scale up its humanitarian response to COVID-19 in the face of escalating needs. 

Ezat Ullah’s family hails from Koz Kunar in Nangarhar Province, in the eastern part of Afghanistan. The family fled to Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) in the 1980s, during the Soviet-Afghan War. His seven siblings, three sisters and four brothers, were also born and raised in Pakistan. In the refugee camp, Ezat and his siblings pursued an education and later, Ezat went on to obtain a Master’s degree in International Relations from Bahria University in Pakistan’s capital city, Islamabad.