For millions of vulnerable people around the world, Red Cross and Red Crescent volunteers are both the face and strength of humanitarian assistance.

They are what defines us and what makes us an embracing humanitarian force in the world. Our role in the IFRC is to ensure that our worldwide membership of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies receives the tools and resources they need to serve humanity effectively.

This is a task we take very seriously.

We work in partnership with other volunteer-based organizsations to exchange experience and lessons, and to develop the best resources possible for use by our National Societies.

Our partnership with UN Volunteers is a vitally important ingredient in this process, for UNV has governmental and inter-governmental connections which most other organisations cannot match.

We, in the IFRC, are privileged by our UN status as an international organisation and by our ability to act as a bridge to civil society as well.

Our National Society members, as auxiliaries to the public authorities in their countries, are able to access government at all levels with their priorities.

The partnership enjoyed by IFRC and UNV was strengthened in 2002 as part of our joint affirmation of the importance of new forms of relationship following IYV.

The substance of the partnership is our joint commitment to supporting volunteers in their service and enabling an environment that optimizes their full potential.

The most visible sign of this shared commitment is our joint publication, with the Inter-Parliamentary Union, of a booklet, a guidance note for use by members of parliaments everywhere in the world as they address proposed legislation which concerns volunteering and volunteerism.

This important booklet has laid a base for further work, which is now underway.

Our experience so far is that the booklet has helped motivate understandings about the work which must be done by national policy and decision-makers if volunteerism is to be able to contribute its true value to communities and nations.

The booklet is an important example of the way tools should be developed through partnerships involving global organisations.

But tools must be seen within the context of the contribution volunteers make in meeting the complex humanitarian challenges faced in every country in the world.

Our member National Societies are committed to scaling up resources to strengthen the capacities of our volunteers to ensure sustainable outcomes for communities, and to ensure that each community maintains the capacity to identify its needs and manage programmes to address and deliver them.

The 30th International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, held here in Geneva last November, brought forward for debate the humanitarian consequences of four major challenges.

I won’t go through these challenges in this statement, for they are well known to all UN member states through their participation in the conference.

What is important to note today is that in each case, the role of volunteers in meeting the challenges was recognised by the conference participants.

The conference also understood that youth, which makes up a significant portion of our volunteers, must be given improved opportunities to serve and contribute and to be involved in the design, implementation and monitoring of humanitarian programs.

Next year, we intend to bring together youth experience from around the world to analyse better ways of engaging youth and volunteerism as contributors to humanitarian effort.

The occasion is the World Red Cross Red Crescent Youth Camp which will be held in Solferino, Italy, at the same time as the Red Cross and Red Crescent marks the 150th anniversary of the battle in June 1859 which gave birth to our Movement.

That battle, as all our members and volunteers know, saw a Swiss man, Henry Dunant, decide to forsake his business ambitions to rally volunteers to tend to wounded soldiers on the battlefield.

This caring, which was conducted without regard for nationality or the politics of warfare, captured the imagination of the world and resulted in the agreement of governments to the first Geneva Convention only five years later.

We all move much more slowly now.

We are, however, assessing the public’s willingness to give both human and material resources to meet humanitarian need.

We intend to make this a centrepiece of our work when we come to IYV+10 in two years.

One element which deserves particular attention is the outpouring of public willingness to volunteer which was seen everywhere in the world in the wake of the Asian tsunamis in 2004.

That outpouring now seems to be a regular feature of public response, and we have seen in vividly in China following the terrible earthquakes there recently.

We have also seen much more interest in volunteering, in various ways, from the private sector.

Many corporations are generous in a straightforward sense, as donors.

Many more, however, are seeing that their employees can gain valuable experience from volunteering, and support initiatives that will encourage their workforce to share their skills, expertise, interests and resources towards meaningful causes.

This has the additional benefit of reinforcing corporate social responsibility.

We also look ahead to IYV+10 because the same year will see the convening of the 31st International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, and with it a concentration on the way volunteers have addressed the humanitarian challenges identified at the conference last year.

This will include, because of the way the IFRC has built its own global agenda, an opportunity to examine the contribution being made by volunteers to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.

It is our hope that UNDP, as well as UNV itself, will register the importance of assessing volunteers as contributors in this sense, and at the same time help make it clear to governments that volunteers are much more than a casual resource:

volunteers must be respected for their contribution to economies, to harmonious communities, to disaster preparedness, to climate change adaptation, to public health and to the dissemination of fundamental humanitarian principles and values.

It is our hope that our partnership with UNV will be able to strengthen this message.

Our organisations enter this period with new leaders. We hope that it will soon be possible for Flavia Pansieri, the new Executive Coordinator, to meet our new Secretary General, Bekele Geleta, and agree on a refreshed joint plan for the period ahead, to 2011 and beyond.