Opening Speech

2015 UNV-Beijing International Volunteer Service Exchange Conference

By Mr Alain Noudéhou

UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative

10:00 – 10:15am, 12 October 2015

China National Convention Centre, 3rd Floor, Beijing

Mrs Zhao Jinfang, Secretary-General of the China Volunteer Federation,

Mrs Teng Shengping, Vice-President of the Beijing Volunteer Federation

Mr Richard Dictus, Executive Coordinator of the UN Volunteers Programme,

Leaders of Volunteer Involving Organisations of the People’s Republic of China and from Other

Countries,

Distinguished Speakers and Participants,

UN Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good morning, 大家好!

As the United Nations Resident Coordinator and the Resident Representative of the United Nations

Development Programme in the People’s Republic of China, it is my honour and pleasure to welcome

each of you to Beijing, and to the inaugural International Volunteer Service Exchange Conference

which the UN Volunteers programme has co-organised with our esteemed hosts, the Beijing

Volunteer Federation. I would like to thank the Beijing Volunteer Federation and UNV for inviting me

to address this important conference, none of which would have been possible without the insightful

guidance of the Beijing Youth League, the Beijing Municipal Government and the China Volunteer

Service Federation.

Whether this is your first time to Beijing or your hundredth time, I hope you are enjoying your

experience here and that you will take the opportunity during our days together to explore a bit of this

magnificent city, which made a deep impression on me when I myself first arrived in China many

years ago as a Tsinghua University undergraduate architecture student from Benin. Reflecting on

how much China and the world at large have changed since then, I invite us all to appreciate how truly

precedent-setting today’s gathering is on many levels.

I understand that many of you are deeply involved in designing, implementing, financing and leading

voluntary service programmes nationally, regionally and globally. On behalf of the United Nations

System in China, I commend you for your efforts. Volunteering has long been recognized as a

fundamental form of citizen engagement within and among societies, and participating in

volunteering initiatives is often a young person’s first introduction to the calling of a national or

international service vocation. I remember how much my own thinking and worldview changed when

I first joined up as a young volunteer to help build homes for poor communities in [__________]. It

was eye-opening, mind-opening and heart-opening, to say the least.

At that time, countries such as Benin and ___________ were more often the recipients of expatriate

volunteering from wealthier societies, rather than as sources of technical expertise, experience and

inspiration on their own. Now, as middle-income countries become increasingly more active in the

global peace and development space, vibrant new actors are working alongside more established

partners to change the way we imagine and enact sustainable development in the 21st century. This

powerful synergy is infusing the global conversation around the UN Post-2015 Sustainable

Development Goals with creativity, innovation, and most importantly, a particular kind of empathy

which is borne from having to come up with ingenious solutions to persistent social and economic

imbalances while working with few resources, unstable climate conditions, social mistrust and

sometimes political uncertainty as well. These pressures can be formidable, but they are also a

powerful invitation to transform them. As the venerable late Nelson Mandela once said, “It always

seems impossible until it is done.”

With this in mind, my colleagues and I look forward to learning more from the rich insight and

experiences on “doing volunteering for peace and development” that all of you bring from Asia, Latin

America, the Arab States, Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, and of course

Africa.

[2015: A Year of Transformative Agendas]

As is rightly indicated in the focus of this International Volunteering Service Exchange Conference to

create a global platform for peer learning, for sharing best practices, for identifying challenges and

opportunities for international volunteerism through new and innovative partnerships - we are indeed

gathering in a year of innovative, transformative global action. This is the year when countries at all

stages of development will transition from the era of the Millennium Development Goals towards a

new, comprehensive and integrative agenda, the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development. It is the

year in which new global agreements are being reached on financing for development, on climate

change and soon to be on global humanitarian action. It is also the year in which China has committed

an unprecedented degree of support to global sustainable development efforts, including but not

limited to:

　　1.Establishing the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the New Development Bank and the

Belt and Road China-Eurasia initiative;

　　2.Committing US $2 billion to the South-South Cooperation Aid Fund to support the

implementation of the SDGs, US $2 million to the World Health Organisation and US $10 million to

UN Women towards health, education and skills training exchanges between women in China and

other countries;

　3.Establishing a 10-year, US $1 billion China-UN Peace and Development Fund and joining the

new UN Peacekeeping Capability Readiness System, with a focus on providing free peacekeeping

assistance to the Africa Union during the next five years.

Thus we must take this precious opportunity to chart a course for sustainable development which

protects our planet, which strengthens resilient communities and States, and which affirms at its core

the values of equity, inclusivity, solidarity and human wellbeing.

[China’s Development and Role of UN]

Let us take a minute to reflect on the recent trajectory of social development in our host country of

China, on the role of the United Nations in assisting the Chinese people to advance sustainable human

and ecological wellbeing, and on how volunteering for peace and development fits with the

development goals of both the Chinese Government and the United Nations.

China is a particularly striking example of a formerly poor, agrarian country which has lifted more

than a third of its people out of poverty in less than fifty years. It has met or exceeded nearly of all its

Millennium Development Goal targets. Highlights of China’s progress in the past 15 years include

raising over 439 million people out of poverty between 1990 and 2011, reducing the under-five

mortality rate by at least two-thirds, cutting the maternal mortality rate by three quarters, halving the

proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation,

and actively engaging in South-South cooperation by providing help to over 120 developing countries

in their own efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

During the past 30 years, China’s human development indicator growth rate was one of the highest in

the world, and China moved into the high human development category in 2013. Inequality as

measured through the Gini coefficient remains above the international warning line of 0.4 and in

China sat at 0.469 in 2014. This is a decline from its peak in 2008 of 0.491.

At the same time, inequalities persist between China’s urban and rural areas, between the wealthier

East coast and the poorer Western and Central regions, between men and women, between youth and

an growing number of elderly persons, and between officially recognized urban residents and their

neighbours who have migrated from rural areas but are still classified as rural and thus are deprived

of access to state-mandated social welfare entitlements.

After three decades of unprecedented rapid economic growth, China has entered a new and more

complex stage of development, one which is focused on improving the quality and depth of

socio-economic growth and more even distribution of national prosperity. These conditions may be

familiar to those of you who are also living in places where multiple developmental states coexist

alongside each other, and where macroeconomic growth indicators are not always consistently

reflected in environmental health conditions, social relations or public consciousness.

[UN’s Work in China]

Towards this end, the United Nations System in China has been working very closely with the people

and Government of China to create sustainable solutions to the national development challenges that

the country is currently facing.

Through the current 2011-2015 UN Development Assistance Framework, the UN System in China

provides support to China on a broad range of issues such as climate change, green consumption,

HIV/AIDS, violence against women, health, and issues around China’s remaining poor and inequity,

including those involving women, children, rural-urban, ethnic minorities and migrants.

In partnership with our Government, private sector and civil society counterparts, the forthcoming

2016-2020 UN Development Assistance Framework has been updated to support China’s evolving

development needs. It provides a more agile format for the UN’s collective work and is based on

leveraging areas where the UN has comparative advantage, rather than on the UN’s former role as a

donor for traditional development programmes. It is harmonized with China’s 13th Five-Year Plan,

which envisions deepened reforms towards a more harmonious, ecological and equitable

development path and addresses the specific needs of China as a rapidly growing and urbanising

Middle-Income Country whose leadership in global development efforts is in growing demand from

Member States. In fact, driven by China’s increasing influence in global affairs, UN agencies in

China are engaging more and more with China on its role in the world, supporting the Government in

its efforts to promote south-south cooperation, as well as regional and global partnerships, including

through international volunteering for peace and development.

Accordingly, the new UN Development Assistance Framework with China focuses broadly on:

1) Poverty Reduction and Equitable Development

2) Improved and Sustainable Environment and

3) Enhanced Global Engagement.

2) Improved and Sustainable Environment and

3) Enhanced Global Engagement.

Seven UN Theme Groups oversee the UN’s joint work in specific policy areas through analysis,

policy advice, and the demonstration of innovative solutions. They serve as platforms for discussion

about key challenges among wider groups of partners, including Government, the international

community, private sector and civil society. The seven Theme Groups focus on the following:

　　1.Facilitating international and national policy dialogues on women’s and children’s health and

the exchange of health commodities with other countries;

　2.Supporting biodiversity, climate change adaptation and environmentally sustainable production

and consumption;

　　3.Contributing towards gender equality and the drafting of a National Domestic Violence

legislation;

　　4.Promoting an effective scaled-up country response towards universal access to AIDS

prevention, treatment and care;

　　5.Creating innovative poverty alleviation mechanisms, with the aim to improve living

conditions, expand economic opportunities, promote inclusiveness and reduce disparities to benefit

the entire population.

　　6.Coordinating UN and international resources at country level in various phases of disaster

management through preparedness, emergency response, rehabilitation and risk reduction to ensure

the least loss of people’s lives and properties, and to achieve rapid recovery. Increasingly, the UN is

working with China on international cooperation in disaster management and humanitarian aid, and I

understand that some of you (eg, the Argentine White Helmets) have also been cooperating bilaterally

with China on this as well.

　　7.And finally, contributing to the Government’s efforts to engage more effectively in

south-south, regional and international cooperation.

Although volunteering for peace and development is not exclusively the provenance of youth, youth

constitute a significant proportion of China’s ______ officially registered volunteers, and I appreciate

that some participants here represent your country’s Youth Ministries or Youth Public Service Corps.

Indeed, voluntary action is often deeply intertwined with youth wellbeing and development. Towards

this end, the UN Country Team in China has recently established a fully operational UN Sub-Theme

Group on Youth, which is part of our Poverty and Inequity cluster. The UN Volunteers programme

and UNICEF are particularly active in promoting youth development initiatives within this group.

I am pleased to share that volunteering is both programmatically and operationally incorporated into

each of these seven theme groups. 21 UN agencies are currently active in China, most of whom have

been operating in partnership with people and Government of China for at least 30 to 35 years. In

addition to the UN Volunteers programme, which began working in China in 1981, it is good to see

here representatives from several other longstanding UN partners, including the UN Development

Programme, UNICEF, and UN-HABITAT, all of whom have hosted or are currently hosting national

UN Volunteers in China. We have had very bright, capable and dedicated UN Volunteers working on

a range of development initiatives with a range of UN agencies here, including on education,

water/sanitation and economic empowerment initiatives in rural minority communities, as well as

implementing disaster risk reduction programmes, providing legal aid for HIV survivors, and running

gender-based violence prevention campaigns among at-risk youth, just to name a few.

Additionally, under the auspices of the UN Development Programme, the UN Volunteers programme

and the Ministry of Commerce, we have had the privilege of working closely with the Beijing

Volunteer Federation and other subnational Chinese volunteering organisations within the

Communist Youth League for a number of years now to strengthen China’s youth public service

volunteer corps, which includes: Training nearly 1.5 million volunteers during the 2008 Beijing

Summer Olympic Games, enhancing large-scale recruitment and management of community-based

volunteers and voluntary organisations, promoting public health, agricultural development and

environmental protection exchanges between China’s wealthier and poorer provinces, fully engaging

innovative technologies and social entrepreneurial models among voluntary organisations, and

advocating for a coherent national volunteerism policy which cuts across all sectors.

In partnership with the All-China Youth Federation, we also encouraged the UN Secretary General

and his UN Envoy for Youth to dialogue actively with Jiangsu Province’s youth volunteers during last

summer’s Nanjing Summer Youth Olympic Games.

In conclusion, the United Nations System in China is delighted to help raise the profile of

international volunteering for peace and development. It is our pleasure to support UNV, the Beijing

Volunteer Service Federation and all of you to jointly create a means for stakeholders from diverse

countries to exchange learning on how voluntary public service within and from our countries can

create more balanced relationships, infrastructure, and systems in and from the societies in which we

live and work, and in our relationship with the natural environment.

If we all work together, we have a chance of meeting all citizens’ aspirations for peace, prosperity and

wellbeing in harmony with the preservation of our planet. 2015 is a once-in-a-generation year for

global sustainable development with a number of significant new agendas on the table. It is my hope

that a groundbreaking global commitment towards enhanced partnerships for international

volunteering in the service of peace and development will be among them.

Thank you for your attention.