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UN Volunteers with UNHCR attending international conference in Islamabad on volunteerism

December 02, 2004

ISLAMABAD, 02 Dec (UNHCR) - Whether opening or closing refugee camps, providing literacy classes or supplying clean water, United Nations Volunteers from around the world have taken on key tasks for the UN Refugee Agency in Pakistan.

The eight UN Volunteers who are currently working with UNHCR in Pakistan will be proof of the importance of this UN programme when they participate in the International Conference on Volunteerism and Millennium Development Goals that Pakistan's Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz will open in Islamabad on Sunday 5 December. "The contribution of the hundreds of UN volunteers and a multitude of community volunteers has been key to protecting, assisting and facilitating the re-integration of millions of refugees around the world," said Guenet Guebre-Christos, representative of UNHCR in Pakistan.

Volunteer Efren Mariano directs refugee convoy from North West Frontier Province (NWFP) to Afghanistan © UNHCR

"UNHCR could not possibly achieve its mission without them, about 600 UN Volunteers in 2004 alone. We are grateful for their dedication; we thank them and salute them on this occasion -- examples of the volunteerism that this conference is honouring," she said.

The eight U.N. Volunteers with UNHCR in Pakistan - part of 455 serving right now with UNHCR worldwide - will have a chance to meet the Executive Coordinator UNV, Ad de Raad, who will be attending the conference. Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of UNICEF, will also be at the conference, which was organised by the National Commission for Human Development of Pakistan and continues until Tuesday 7 December.

The conference will have more than 150 participants from Pakistan and abroad, representing a broad group of government and civil society leaders. The focus is on fulfilling the UN Millennium Development Goals, which set targets for reducing poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women by 2015.

The UN Volunteers with UNHCR have been crucial to the agency's operations, representing about 10 percent of the global staff at any moment. In Pakistan, they have played a prominent role, especially since UNHCR faced a new emergency with a flow of some 300,000 Afghans toward the Pakistani border because of the war in Afghanistan in late 2001.

UNHCR, with the support of the Government of Pakistan, had to quickly set up a series of refugee camps along the border, often on inhospitable tracts of land. That involved not just transporting refugees to the site and distributing tents, but required installation of vital infrastructure to meet the needs for water, sanitation, schools and clinics.

Once the camps were operating, residents received food rations and services such as primary education and basic health care that were already provided for more than a million other refugees who had sheltered in camps established for earlier waves of flight from Afghanistan.

Now, with the return of nearly 2.3 million Afghans from Pakistan since 2002 under UNHCR's voluntary repatriation programme, the UN Refugee Agency this year closed the emergency camps that were established three years ago. Further consolidation of camps, facing falling numbers of residents because of repatriation, is likely in 2005 in the last year of the current programme to assist Afghans who wish to repatriate.

In all this work - establishing camps, closing camps and caring for refugees in all of the 150 camps in Pakistan - the UN Volunteers have performed tasks indistinguishable from that done by other UNHCR staff. The eight now with UNHCR in Pakistan are involved in all aspects of the work.

Efren Mariano, a site planner and field officer from the Philippines who is working with UNHCR Sub-Office Peshawar, helped prepare the emergency sites in North West Frontier Province three years ago and has now helped close them. John Saad, from Sierra Leone, has done the same work in Balochistan operating out of UNHCR Sub-Office Quetta.

The vital water and sanitation needs of camps were covered by Bikram Thakuri, a Nepalese expert working in the Peshawar office, and Aselefetch Mengesha, a German citizen assigned to the office in Quetta.

Another two UN Volunteers filled the roles of health coordinators: Dr Benjamin Ugbe, a Nigerian working in the Quetta office, and Dr Isa Musulo, a Ugandan based in the Peshawar office.

Jane Nankaayi, a Ugandan volunteer assigned to the office in Quetta, has overseen the community services operation in Balochistan, promoting literacy, protection of women, community organisation and other social improvements that will be necessary whether refugees repatriate or stay. Krishna Dhakal, another Nepalese volunteer, has been working as a field protection officer caring for refugees in Balochistan.

UNHCR has long recognised the importance of the UN Volunteer programme, which is administered by the UN Development Programme. In 2003 more than 5,600 UN Volunteers, representing 162 nationalities, served various UN organisations in 144 countries. They are mid-career professionals with the skills needed in the United Nations efforts to create peace and development.

In 2000 UNHCR awarded a special Nansen Medal, which recognises the most outstanding work for refugees, to the UN Volunteers in recognition of the work they had done, often in very difficult conditions.

"Few deserve recognition more than these professionals who brave hardship and danger in some of the toughest places, receiving an allowance but no salary," said Sadako Ogata, then the High Commissioner for Refugees. "Some of our finest staff started as UN Volunteers."