Gulfam Mustafa, UN Volunteer Partnership and Resource Mobilization Officer serving with the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Guinea Bissau  As an international UN Volunteer, I live in a country thousands of miles away from my home. I have my family and kids back in Pakistan. Following the news of increasing COVID-19 cases causes me fear, anxiety and mental stress.

Multilingualism allows communication between the different Member States of the United Nations (UN) with different languages and cultures. In promoting tolerance, multilingualism ensures greater participation of all Member States in the work they perform within the Organization, as well as greater effectiveness, better results and greater participation. To promote the use of the six official languages and to guarantee the full and equitable treatment of all official languages, there are minimum standards for multilingualism of UN websites.

The spirit of altruism and volunteering is a core tenet of the United Nations, where individuals around the world can contribute to the UN goals of universal betterment in progressive social, environmental and economic transformation. Volunteerism in the UN is championed especially by the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme, an organization that works with partners to integrate volunteers into development programming and promote the value and global recognition of volunteerism.

As part of the next State of the World’s Volunteerism Report, UNV commissioned a study based on original multi-country quantitative data to understand patterns of volunteer participation during the global COVID-19 pandemic, volunteer motivations and experiences, and what these might mean for people’s voluntary participation in the remainder of the Decade of Action.

While there are an estimated 370 million indigenous people around the world, most remain largely excluded from mainstream decision-making processes. As a result, despite making up 5 per cent of the world’s population, 15 per cent of indigenous people suffer from extreme poverty.

The International Volunteer Day was celebrated in Mali and chaired by Prime Minister Mobido Keita who reiterated, in the presence of the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme Deputy Executive Coordinator, Nicola Harrington, that the national authorities are committed to promote volunteerism.