Sofia Tabita Echeverria is a lawyer from Ecuador and works as a UN Volunteer in her home country for UNHCR at the refugee regristration center in San Lorenzo.(UNV/Andrew Smith 2009)

EN

GL

ISH

Overview

In the aftermath of conflicts or natural disasters, peo-ple often need assistance from the international com-munity. The United Nations is there to help get the aid flowing and to enable recovery and rehabilitation. UN Volunteers frequently play a key part in delivering this assistance, and often at the front line.

Supporting the operations of various UN agencies, UN Volunteers engage in a wide range of roles with the ul-timate aim to save and protect the lives of people inclu- ding refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs), to alleviate suffering and to uphold human dignity.

Humanitarian assistance is a priority for the United Na-tions Volunteers (UNV) programme in order to fulfill its mandate to deliver peace and sustainable development through volunteerism. Humanitarian assistance and cri-sis prevention and recovery (CPR) are key priority areas of the UNV Programme Strategy which UNV achieves by engaging at operational and programme levels with the respective UN lead agencies in the areas of:

Emergency response;

Child protection;

Protection of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs);

Provision of basic services and

Marginalized communities empowerment.

Humanitarian assistance can span the spectrum of support from emergency humanitarian relief in times of crisis to post-crisis recovery, helping to secure long lasting peace right through to development.

This Overview on UNV in action: Humanitarian Assistance focuses on the assistance UNV and UN Volunteers provide in emergency situations and on the three key UN humanitarian assistance agencies that are usually first on the ground. These are: the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

UNV in action: Humanitarian Assistance

“There is never a year without humanitarian crises ... and wherever there are people in need, there are people who help them – men and women coming together to ease suffering and bring hope.”UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on World Humanitarian Day 2011

UN Volunteer Conde Nantenin helps children off a truck that is part of a convoy returning with IDPs in Ituri, North Kivu, DRC. Some IDPs had already begun to return to their village of origin. Convoys were organized by UNHCR so that the people could return to their home area safely and with dignity. The people were also given assistance to facilitate their reintegration.(UNV DRC)

Of the 6,800 UN Volunteers fielded around the world in 2012, over 1,100 (17%) were deployed to UNHCR, WFP and OCHA, where emergency humanitarian assistance was the principle focus of their assignments. They worked in crisis situations, delivering basic services in health, food and livelihoods and protecting the vulnerable.

In the past five years, UN Volunteers have supported humanitarian response in war-torn and post-conflict countries such as Afghanistan, Burundi, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Chad, Guinea, Liberia, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Thailand, to name a few.

UN Volunteers have also supported humanitarian assistance efforts in countries during famines and after natural disasters, for example in the immediate aftermath of Cyclone Nargis which swept across the Burmese Peninsula in May 2008, the massive earthquake in Haiti in January 2010 and the monsoon-driven floods in Pakistan during July and August 2010.

UNHCR

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is the third largest partner of UNV. Mandated to lead and coordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide, its primary purpose is to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees.

Since the partnership began in 2000, the number of UN Volunteers serving with UNHCR every year has almost tripled. In 2012, 967 UN Volunteers from 104 countries were fielded with UNHCR in 82 of the 126 countries it was active. They accounted for more than 12% of UNHCR’s field staff.

About 50% of these 967 were conducting core emergency response, working mainly in the areas of protection and refugee eligibility, and refugee status determination.

Another third provided substantive support (legal, gender, project/programme, coordination, training, public information, outreach, communications), and the remaining 20% provided operational support (IT, database management, logistics, finance, human resources and interpretation/translation).

“We were able to carry out the first food distribution in Jacmel only five hours after the quake ... Not only were we able to react extremely quickly, but the coordination of the emergency relief efforts worked well and we were able to serve between 70 and 80 % of the population,”

UN Volunteer Hazem El Zein (Lebanon) ran food distribution for WFP in the southeast region of Haiti when the January 2010 earthquake hit. He and his team distributed food to 300,000 people.

WFP

In emergencies, the World Food Programme (WFP) gets food to where it is needed, saving the lives of victims of war, civil conflict and natural disasters. Getting food to people in need following an earthquake, flood or other crisis is a daunting task. Those in the field must quickly dispatch vehicles, such as helicopters, trucks and boats filled with food. They must track airdrops and the other deliveries, assist partners in organizing distribution while staying on top of administrative duties. There are also the effects of the natural disaster or conflict to face, such as collapsed bridges, washed out or blocked roads, perhaps landslides, which present new obstacles daily.

These rigors notwithstanding, in 2012, 173 UN Volunteers from 49 countries served with WFP in 41 countries. UN Volunteers ran the WFP sub-offices in 15 regions and 37 were Programme Officers. Carrying out a variety of assignments, UN Volunteers also held positions as logisticians, field officers, food aid monitors and nutritionists among others.

OCHA

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is the arm of the UN Secretariat that is responsible for bringing together humanitarian actors to ensure coherent response to emergencies.

“After Cyclone Nargis in 2008, national UNV civil engineers were invaluable to UNHCR activities ... [assisting] affected communities in the Delta and Yangon areas.” UN Volunteers provided materials and helped in building low-cost shelters for vulnerable people.

National UN Volunteer Khin Pwint Oo works with internally displaced people in Myanmar

In 2012, 42 UN Volunteers from 23 countries served with OCHA in 14 countries. Almost half were deployed to the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Niger and Colombia. Overall, more than half were assigned to the areas of humanitarian affairs, field work, communications, public information and disaster management. UN Volunteers also served in the areas of protection, logistics, IT, finance, administration and inventory management.

UNV’s Added VAlUe

To UN humanitarian partners, UN Volunteers complement the collective talent they need to address humanitarian situations. The added support and deployment of international and national UN Volunteers who reside and work together with crisis-affected communities is a critical element to ensuring the delivery and implementation of their programmes. UN Volunteers are an important support to capacity development. In addition to contributing their professional skills, many train, coach and mentor local counterparts in host countries.

UN Volunteers often go the extra mile, engaging directly with local communities, demonstrating by their actions their values of inclusion, gender equity and commitment to volunteerism as a means to achieve peace and social development.

Asghar Ali Shah, National UNV Camp Manager for District Government Manserha, helping to teach

children in a temporary school in Jaba Camp of District Manserha after the earthquake hit Pakistan in 2006.

(UNV/Waqas Anees)

Participants in the national consultation on youth volunteering in Morocco. (Laboratoire Brahim/UNV, 2012)

UN Volunteer Junko Nomura (Japan), Associate Reintegration Officer with UNHCR, registers new refugees coming from the DRC in Nkamira Transit Centre in Rwanda. (Anouck Bronee/UNHCR, 2012)

UN

V (M

ay 2

013)

They cultivate empowerment among the marginalized groups and host populations, de-monstrating that all are entitled to dignity and to become pro-active in designing their future.

At various times over the years, UN Volunteers have partnered with local communities and set up youth groups, awareness-raising events against HIV/AIDS and violence against women and girls as well as campaigns to promote diversity and the inclusion of marginalized people.

Their capacity development skills and local know-ledge form some of the aspects of the added value volunteers contribute in this area.

A remarkable and welcome finding is that, despite the often difficult environments in which emergency response work is carried out (e.g. frequently at non-family duty stations), UN Volunteers in emergency response operations often approach 100% gender balance in the rate of participation by male and female UN Volunteers.

UN Volunteers support the mandates and programmes of partners at all stages of the emergency spectrum. UNV also regularly deals with the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations and United Nations Department of Political Affairs (DPKO/DPA), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

The United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme is the UN organization that promotes volunteerism to sup-port peace and development worldwide. Volunteerism can transform the pace and nature of development and it benefits both society at large and the individual volunteer. UNV contributes to peace and development by advocating for volunteerism globally, encouraging partners to integrate volunteerism into development programming, and mobilizing volunteers.

UNV is administered by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

“It is most rewarding to be able to work in the field in direct contact with beneficiaries on humanitarian issues, discuss directly with them their needs, advocate for their rights and through this, see their resilience against future shocks strengthened.”

UN Volunteer Birgitt Hotz (Germany), Humanitarian Officer with OCHA in Somalia

For more information about UNV, please visit www.unv.org