United Nations resolutions on volunteering

This resolution establishes UNV as an international group of volunteers within the framework of the United Nations system.

This resolution “notes with satisfaction the successful achievement of the United Nations Volunteers programme during the first decade of service, that it is active in 93 countries, including the least developed countries, and that it has, in response to General Assembly resolution 34/107 of 14 December 1979, reached ahead of schedule the target of 1,000 volunteers in service”.

The General Assembly “reaffirms that the United Nations Volunteers programme continues to be an effective instrument of multilateral technical co-operation programmes responding to the needs of the developing countries, particularly to those of the last developed among them”.

This resolution proposes recommendations on how governments and the United Nations can support volunteering, defined as a “wide range of activities, including traditional forms of mutual aid and self-help, formal service delivery and other forms of civic participation, undertaken of free will, for the general public good and where monetary reward is not the principal motivating factor”.

This resolution calls upon stakeholders to “support volunteerism as a strategic tool to enhance economic and social development” and requests the Secretary-General to report the implementation of the current resolution.

This resolution invites Governments “to carry out activities focused on marking the tenth anniversary of the International Year in 2011 at the regional and national levels” and invites the “Commission for Social Development to consider ‘volunteerism for development’ in the context of its theme of social integration at its forty-seventh and forty-eighth sessions, in 2009 and 2010 respectively”.

This resolution marks the tenth anniversary of the International Year of Volunteers and “Emphasizes the important contribution of volunteering to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, and calls for a people-centred, holistic approach to the promotion of volunteering”.

This resolution “encourages Member States to support volunteer action for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, including the integration of volunteerism into sector priorities and national development strategies, plans and policies”, and “requests United Nations entities, as well as United Nations country teams, to reflect the distinct contributions of volunteering in Sustainable Development Cooperation Frameworks and country programme documents”.