SECRETARY-GENERAL PRAISES VITAL CONTRIBUTION VOLUNTEERS MAKE TO HUMAN PROGRESS ON OCCASION OF INTERNATIONAL VOLUNTEER DAY, 5 DECEMBER
Press Release
SG/SM/6813
SECRETARY-GENERAL PRAISES VITAL CONTRIBUTION VOLUNTEERS MAKE TO HUMAN PROGRESS ON OCCASION OF INTERNATIONAL VOLUNTEER DAY, 5 DECEMBER
19981130 Following is Secretary-General Kofi Annan's message on the occasion of International Volunteer Day, observed on 5 December:This has been a year of dreadful natural calamities, of human conflicts -- some new and virulent, some old and festering -- and of a drastic economic setback to what were the most rapidly developing countries. Yet we cannot lose faith in the broad progress of humankind, which has survived so many evils in the past. We can be optimistic about the future, yet realistic: literacy is spreading overall, health gradually improving, life expectation increasing. Year by year, generation by generation, there is progress.
Behind that progress lie many factors. One is the willingness of many individuals to devote their time, effort and resources to the welfare and advancement of all. We call them volunteers.
As we once again mark International Volunteer Day, this time in the fiftieth anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we particularly recall the volunteers who have down the years pioneered respect for those rights. Progress in human rights does not happen by magic: it always involves a struggle -- and a struggle which is all too far from being over. In the search to prevent conflict and in remedying its consequences, men and women in their thousands are in the vanguard of human rights work as volunteer counsellors, writers, and reformers in their own communities. Others -- bilateral or United Nations volunteers for example -- have the privilege of sharing their commitment in lands beyond their own, as monitors, trainers and civic educators.
I hope that volunteers the world over, as they gather together on 5 December, will begin to plan how best the International Year of Volunteers, which the United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed for 2001, can enhance yet further the vital contribution that volunteers make to human progress.
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