QUNO

The Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) organised an influential residential workshop at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center, on Lake Como, Italy, entitled “Plastic Money: Turning off the Subsidies Tap” from 26 to 30 March 2024. 

QUNO’s Sustainable and Just Economic Systems (SJES) programme took the lead on this event and brought together a diverse group of 21 stakeholders. This included government representatives, inter-governmental bodies, legal scholars and social scientists, non-governmental organisations, and experts from charitable foundations. 

 On 5 March 2024, Members of the Temporary Committee for the Indigenous Coordinating Body for Enhanced Participation, the Canadian Friends Service Committee (CFSC), and the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) hosted an informal “Ask Anything” discussion with United Nations (UN) diplomats inviting them to ask questions and learn about to enhanced participation of Indigenous Peoples at the UN.  

QUNO New York’s UN representative, Kavita Desai, joined the American Friends Service Committee’s (AFSC) Action Hour on the ongoing crisis in Gaza on the 1st of March. The weekly space brings people from across the US together for a dedicated hour to learn about the situation on the ground in Gaza and to mobilize political action in support of peace by encouraging people to contact elected officials to call for a ceasefire. 

Ahead of the fourth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-4) for a global plastics treaty, scheduled in Ottawa, Canada, from April 23 to 29, the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO), in collaboration with a coalition of civil society organizations and international entities, drafted a letter urging the Swiss government to adopt an ambitious stance in the negotiations. This initiative, part of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), aims to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution (ILBI).