UN Volunteers believes that everyone in the world can contribute their time and energy as volunteers and this would transform the pace and nature of development and peace. UNV’s mission is to deliver on that potential through partnership with UN agencies, governments, NGOs and others.

Since it was established by the UN General Assembly in 1970, UNV has ｐprovided more than 50,000 world citizens with the opportunity to participate in the activities of UN agencies all over the world as UNV volunteers. So far more than 900 Japanese volunteers have contributed their expertise to the programmeand about 80-90 Japanese volunteers serves every year. Since 2007, UNV has also contributed to the Japanese government’s initiative to develop human resources in peace building by deploying the Japanese specialists as UN Volunteers in cooperation with partner UN agencies under their “Programme for Human Resource Development in Asia for Peacebuilding”.

The year of 2011 marked the tenth anniversary of International Year of Volunteers 2001 (IYV+10) which was originally proposed by the Japanese government and later adopted by the UN General Assembly. IYV+10 was globally promoted for renewed recognition of volunteerism for peace and development and debate for the future of volunteerism. In celebrating IYV+10, UNV launched first ever “State of the World’s Volunteerism Report” in 2011. In the report, UNV proposes new perspectives of volunteerism in relation with the post 2015 development agenda through discussing volunteerism in relation with “sustainable development” and “well-being”.

The government of Japan has played an active role for promoting global volunteerism through supporting IYV+10 in various ways including sponsoring the UN General Assembly Resolution on IYV+10 adopted on 5th December 2011. In Japan, IYV+10 has coincided with a renewed recognition of volunteerism through civic engagement in response to the Great East Japan Earthquake on 11th March 2011. Over 1 million people in Japan have joined volunteering to support the people in the affected areas. Furthermore, in following up to IYV+10, the Government of Japan also co-sponsored the Resolution “Integrating volunteering in the next decade” adopted on 13 February 2013.

UNV hopes that the people of Japan would agreed to share their advanced forms of volunteerism with global society and kindly support the promotion of volunteerism for peace and development in developing countries.