Covid hit. Everything shut down. I had a job in Egypt but wanted an international perspective, so I started looking for opportunities, and then one day I landed in Somalia. It was April 2021 and amidst the ongoing unrest in the country around that time, I thought to myself – my international volunteer experience is going to end before it begins. A feeling of risk started to settle in. I made sure that my runaway bag was ready.

I serve with the UN Environment and Climate Security Advisor to Somalia, whose position is under the UN Environment Programme, but who is seconded to the UN Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM). This way, I have the unique opportunity to serve with two agencies. With the Climate Security Advisor, our overarching goal is to assist Somali communities in becoming resilient to increasingly recurrent and frequent climatic shocks, while also mitigating possible climate-related conflicts.

The fourth State of the World’s Volunteerism Report (SWVR), Building Equal and Inclusive Societies, is designed to strengthen understanding on volunteerism and demonstrate its universality, scope, and reach in the twenty-first century.

What are the key highlights of your assignment, and who do you interact with in your daily work?

Tell us about the nature of your posting I am a UN Volunteer with UNSOS based in Mogadishu, Somalia. The core mission of UNSOS is to provide critical support needed by the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), the UN Mission in Somalia (UNSOM) and Somali Security Forces for effective peacebuilding efforts in Somalia.

Senior UN Volunteers are not common – the average global age of UN Volunteers is 32 – but the Haddows can attest to the many benefits their presence brings both to the missions they serve, and to themselves as older volunteers. Rather than spending their retirement years in quiet relaxation, the Haddows, both from the United Kingdom, chose to share their lifetime of expertise as UN Volunteers with United Nations missions.

Currently, 40 UN Volunteers are deployed with the UN Support Office for Somalia (UNSOS) and 12 UN Volunteers with the UN Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM). They serve from different locations in Somalia and Kenya. This is a significant increase over the years from 18 UN Volunteers in 2015. With an average age of 42 years and a gender ratio of 30 per cent women, UNSOS is making significant progress towards achieving gender parity among UN Volunteers.

UN Peacekeeping is one of the largest United Nations partners of the UN Volunteers (UNV) programme. In 2019, more than 2,000 UN Volunteers served with UN Peacekeeping in 17 different missions around the world, contributing to protection and peacebuilding efforts and promoting volunteerism across the United Nations system.