UNV provides strategic service lines to channel the skill and energy of qualified volunteers in the pursuit of peace and development worldwide. The six main service lines emerged as a direct result of multiple consultations with partners over the years.

The service lines provide UN entities with strong assignment models to quickly mobilize and deploy volunteers to address humanitarian, peace and development priorities. UNV's service and support can include mixed teams of international and national UN Volunteers, UN Youth Volunteers and UN Online Volunteers, along with the identification of highly qualified candidates (with relevant language skills and diverse experience), common induction/training, joint resource mobilization efforts and even integration of UN Volunteers into global, regional and national programmes.

UNV Service Lines

Volunteers as a Rapid Response Solution to Global Health Emergencies offers a coordinated response to health emergency situations, where resources must be mobilized quickly and efficiently to assist affected communities. UNV has the capacity to help UN partners and national governments respond to crises and create an immediate relief situation with positive effects. When health emergencies occur, UNV can draw on its extensive talent pool of over 25,000 potential candidates and deploy them to crisis zones, at the forefront of humanitarian action, and in joint efforts to support recovery.

UN Volunteers at Headquarters Duty Stations offers the placement of specialist UN Volunteers and UN Youth Volunteers in Headquarters duty stations of the UN to increase on-site capacities as an alternative to internship schemes and traineeship experiences. The service line is designed to foster innovation in a culturally-diverse environment and to affirmatively promote gender equality in recruitment and selection.

UN Volunteers in Support of the UN Resident Coordinator system reinforce the UN Resident Coordinators and UN Country Teams and provide the Member States with increased capacity to analyze milieus and implement strategies that truly localize the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). UN Volunteers are particularly suited to help the UN Resident Coordinator create synergies between different UN programmes and mechanisms, support institutional infrastructures and build partnerships with national governments and other stakeholders.

UN Volunteers for International and National Events offers organizational support for large national and international events through the mobilization of UN Volunteers with strong technical and logistical expertise to handle event management tasks, design communication materials or develop websites. The UNV event teams consist of a number of UN Volunteers who recruit, train and manage a network of additional local volunteers for large-scale events. We have recently completed resources and a blue print for our partners to use in creating volunteer programs for large-scale events. Please click here for the resources. 

UN Volunteers to Enhance Monitoring and Evaluation Capacity offers specialist UN Volunteers with an expertise in data mining, measurement and evaluation to observe development processes and results, identify insufficiencies and provide technical guidance for the realization of programmes and projects that strengthen the impact of the UN in the field.

UN Volunteers for Electoral Support offers specialist UN Volunteers and UN Youth Volunteers to observe electoral processes. UN Volunteers handle various technical and logistical arrangements and mobilize communities to ensure credible and peaceful elections are taking place. This service line builds upon previous UNV successes in supporting electoral processes in countries such as Timor-Leste, Mali, Afghanistan, South Sudan and, most recently, Kenya and Lebanon.

Broad consultations with UN entities led to the establishment of UNV service lines. These embody a set of standardized volunteer services based on standard Descriptions of Assignments dedicated to facilitate developmental efforts across UN entities.