Volunteer forum evaluates activities of UN International Year of Volunteers, advises follow-up

GENEVA, 21 November 2001 -- An international gathering of experts on volunteering wrapped up Wednesday with a message to the United Nations General Assembly on support for efforts to encourage volunteer action at the close of the UN International Year of Volunteers 2001 (IYV).

“The International Year of Volunteers has provided tremendous impetus to what is fast becoming a worldwide movement. IYV is already a milestone in the history of volunteering: it must also be a stepping stone to the future,” according to a statement from the International Symposium on Volunteering.

The meeting, which brought together some 400 government officials and volunteer leaders from 108 countries from 18 to 21 November, evaluated the activities of IYV and set the stage for follow-up actions. Representatives from 98 IYV National Committees discussed plans to continue their work into next year through research into national volunteering and by transforming the committees into national centres to train and support volunteers.

Wednesday’s statement will be read out at the UN General Assembly during a special event on 5 December – the annual International Volunteer Day.

“IYV has been the first UN International Year powered by the Internet,” said Sharon Capeling-Alakija, Executive Coordinator of the United Nations Volunteers programme (UNV) who represented UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan at the symposium. “We realize that a digital network needs a human network, and the dynamic volunteers at this Symposium have helped to create both.”

H.R.H. Prince Felipe de Asturias of Spain, an Eminent Person for the International Year of Volunteers, recalled the UN’s role in order to reach international peace. “The United Nations has an important role to play in bringing together the efforts of governments and non-governmental organizations to establish a volunteer coalition,” he said.

Speaking on the role of women in the North and South, Dr. Nafis Sadik, Special Adivser to the UN Secretary-General and IYV Eminent Person, said she had learned more about people “during my time as a volunteer than during my time in medical practice and medical institutions”.

“You, dear volunteers, have made our world a little kinder, a little more gentle, a little more humane,” she said, adding that major issues taken up by the United Nations, such as human rights, environment, family planning and the campaign against landmines, were initiated by individual volunteers, eventually to reach national and international levels.

Alfredo Sfeir-Younis, the World Bank’s special representative to the United Nations and the World Trade Organization, introduced the concept of “Volunteer Capital, the only form of capita that has human will as it source.”

Debate on the role of volunteers – who bring “trillions of dollars to economies” – must be “echoed everywhere in the world”.

“From a political perspective, volunteers are the principle source of strengthening our democracies,” he said, adding: “Voluntarism is democracy at work, and through the exercise of volunteer work, our systems of decision-making and reaching out improve day by day.”

The symposium was organized by the International Symposium Association, International Conference Volunteers and UNV. It has received substantial financial support from the Swiss Government, the Republic and Canton of Geneva, the City of Geneva, the Japanese Government and UNV.

UNV is the volunteer arm of the UN system. It extends hands-on assistance for peace and development in nearly 150 countries. Created by the UN General Assembly in 1970 and administered by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), UNV works through UNDP country offices to send volunteers--two-thirds of them from developing countries--and promote the ideals of volunteerism around the world.