UNV has developed a successful partnership with the UNODC Regional Office for West and Central Africa based in Dakar, especially in the mobilization of youth volunteers.  Over the course of three years, 21 UN Volunteers and UN Youth Volunteers have supported UNODC in Senegal in the fight against illicit drugs and transnational organized crime in the region. They especially contribute in the cross-cutting areas such as programme management, communications and monitoring & evaluation.

In 2014, national authorities in CAR decided to establish a Special Criminal Court (SCC) to investigate and prosecute serious human rights violations, including crimes against humanity and war crimes. The law on the creation of the Court was promulgated on the 3 June 2015. It demonstrated strong political willingness to end impunity and the importance of equality, justice and freedom in achieving sustainable peace.  

My daily work is very busy and captivating. I promote UNDP and the United Nations system projects and work with national and international partners to support our actions and ensure the visibility of our results. I help coordinate the communication activities of UN agencies in the country along with other UN communication officers. I meet regularly beneficiaries of UNDP, especially  young people, in order to conduct interviews or reports. I have found myself passionate about communicating about the SDGs and I regularly train local NGOs on this topic.

Under this year’s IVD theme “Volunteers act first. Here. Everywhere“, two events were planned in the Montserrado County in the North West of Liberia. For the very first time, the UNV Field Unit also organized awareness events in Grand Gedeh County (Zwedru) and Grand Cape Mount County (Robertsport).

My name is Ouedraogo Mohamadi. I am an international UN Volunteer working as an information analyst at the Joint Mission Analysis Centre (JMAC) of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA). I started in Kidal but now work in Gao, Northern Mali. My role is to collect and analyse data as part of MINUSMA's mandate. I also assist the Head of the Mission in Gao. I help ensure that the mission's mandate is carried out.

"Voices Against Violence" in Togo is an $85,000 USD project that was funded and implemented by the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme between October 2016 and April 2017.  The project is based on an informal education program developed by the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts and UN Women.  It aims to fight against gender-based violence by raising the awareness of young secondary students about the root causes of violence, ways to prevent it, and finding solutions.

The Gender Based Violence Sub Cluster Report from West and Central African countries facing armed conflict revealed that the prevalence of sexual and gender-based violence has drastically increased since the last report in 2016. It is in this line that we jointly organized, in 2017, a regional capacity building workshop on gender mainstreaming, prevention and response to Gender-Based Violence (GBV) in emergency and humanitarian settings in Dakar, Senegal.

At the scenes of the mudslides and flash floods that killed over 500 people and displaced approximately 6000 others, volunteers played amazingly important roles in very many ways. According to Pieter Peters*, a resident of the downstream Kamayama community, rescuing people that were being washed away as well as recovering the dead from the gushing streams was frightening, but, he says, it had to be done. “We pulled both living and dead people from the flood waters in large numbers.”

The most severe mudslides – triggered by three days of heavy rains – occurred in the coastal suburb of Racecourse on the city’s eastern edge, as well as in Regent and Lumley where thousands of makeshift settlements are home to the city’s poorest communities. Response teams, including dozens of Sierra Leone Red Cross (SLRCS) volunteers recovered people from the mud and debris, helping evacuate residents, transferring bodies to morgues and providing medical care to the injured.

Volunteering and South-South Cooperation share common ideals that make them perfect partners: solidarity, respect and equality. Both have an opportunity to derive mutual benefit from their alliance. The landscape of international volunteering, like that of international cooperation, has changed immensely in the past decades. Today’s programmes are no longer limited to the participation of traditional donor countries of the North.