Bonn, 9 March 2016 – This year, the family of United Nations Organizations is celebrating its 20th anniversary in Bonn and yesterday two honoured guests - UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon and German Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier - were welcomed to the World Conference Centre (WCCB) to participate in a panel discussion on “20 years of Bonn as a UN city – shaping a sustainable future in the light of volunteering”.

Executive Secretaries Bradnee Chambers (CMS), Jacques Trouvillliez (AEWA) and Andreas Streit (EUROBATS) together with CMS Deputy Executive Secretary, Bert Lenten, attended the event.

Foreign Minister Steinmeier, after paying tribute to the work of the United Nations Volunteers, one of the larger organizations based in the UN premises in Bonn, said that the city was now firmly associated with the commitment of countless volunteers who work worldwide for peace, climate protection and human rights.  The Secretary-General’s address included a quotation from Erich Kästner’s poem, Moral: “Nothing good is achieved unless you do it.”  He also commented that the United Nations in Bonn had grown from the seed of an idea to a true centre for sustainable global development.

The Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) was amongst the first UN organizations to have its headquarters in Bonn, the city that gives the Convention its byname and where it was negotiated in 1979.  Bonn remains the seat of the CMS Secretariat which is housed in the former offices of German parliamentarians, the tower “Langer Eugen” on the banks of the Rhine.  The Secretariats of the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbird (AEWA) and the Agreement on the Conservation of Populations of European Bats (EUROBATS), which became part of UN Bonn in the year 2000, are also located there.

For more information on the visit of the Secretary General and the Foreign Minister and the panel discussion, please click here.