The COVID-19 pandemic will have devastating effects on UN programme countries, reversing many positive gains in sustainable development. The negative social and economic impact particularly affects people most often left behind; such as women, children and those with disabilities.
In support of countries and UN partners in the COVID-19 response, the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme is investing its own resources to immediately deploy 70 UN Volunteers to countries severely affected by the crisis.
Due to travel restrictions, the initial focus will be on the deployment of national UN Volunteers, as they can be quickly mobilized to become operational in their own country. This special recruitment for the COVID-19 response will focus on public health, information management and coordination. These UN Volunteers will work side by side with staff of the World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), UN Resident Coordinator’s Office, the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and other UN partners.
“UNV is investing in strategic placement of national UN Volunteers on the ground, in support of our United Nations’ partners tireless work to fight this pandemic and its impact on sustainable development.” states Olivier Adam, Executive Coordinator, UNV.
The investment of 1 million USD comes from the Special Voluntary Fund (SVF), a flexible multi-donor fund which allows UNV to provide timely and strategic investments when needed, such as during the current COVID-19 crisis.
UNV has fifty years of experience in mobilizing talented and committed professionals as UN Volunteers for peace and development, through our various modalities. UN Volunteers, like Zhao Tiansong, assigned to UNDP in China, have already shown value in keeping communities safe during COVID-19 outbreaks. Even before COVID-19 became a global crisis, UNV and WHO launched ‘the Africa Women Health Champions’.
For more information on UNV’s COVID-19 response, please visit: https://www.unv.org/Volunteers-for-Novel-Coronavirus-COVID-19-pandemic-response.