QUNO

On 3 December, QUNO NY Director, Andrew Tomlinson, spoke as the only NGO representative on a high-level panel discussion, The place of human rights in a reformed United Nations: A transatlantic human rights dialogue, held at UN headquarters.  The panel was convened by  Switzerland and Germany as the Co-Chairs of the Human Rights/Conflict Prevention Caucus, the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR) and Universal Rights Group (URG). 

In his remarks, Mr. Tomlinson sought to underscore that  the promotion  and protection of human rights is both the foundation of peace and security, sustainable development, and conflict prevention, and is the key force to achieving the 2030 Agenda’s aspiration of fostering peaceful, just and inclusive societies.  At this meeting, attended by member states and UN colleagues, Mr. Tomlinson reflected that, not only are human rights the backbone to prevention, sustainable peace, and sustainable development, human rights also codify our common humanity, providing the foundation for human dignity and just societies. Human rights, he said, "give us the words to say I see you, I know you, I am you, to every child, woman and man". 

The UN derives much of its relevance and legitimacy from its embrace of human rights as an organizing principle and a moral driver. QUNO is honored to have contributed to this, and future, dialogues.

This panel, organized by ​the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), Berghof Foundation and the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) during Geneva Peace Week, discussed how we can integrate human rights, nonviolent action and peacebuilding to sustain peace by bridging the silos and shifting the mindset of how civil society participates through nonviolent action and peacebuilding.

Examples of how this is done came from practitioners as well as policy level experts:

• Veronique Dudouet, Program Director for Conflict Transformation Research, Berghof
• Lisa Schirch, Research Director, Toda Peace Institute
• Millicent Otieno, Founder and the Director of Local Capacities for Peace International
• Shaazka Beyerle, Senior Research Advisor, Program on Nonviolent Action, United States Institute of Peace
• Florence Foster, Quaker United Nations Office representative for Peace and Disarmament

All agreed that to leverage true transformation towards sustaining peace, the complementarity of the human rights legal framework, political/elite peacebuilding processes and social movements needs to be acknowledged and put into practice at all levels.

The full article is available below (PDF document).

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QUNO Geneva through its Peace and Disarmament Programme continues to promote integrated action between peacebuilding and human rights actors on the ground and in the UN system. A pilot initiate notably brought together both peacebuilding and human rights civil society organisations to interact and engage in the UPR process and to promote input by UN Peace and Security agencies to the process and increased use of UPR outputs and awareness of implementation processes in the work of those UN agencies. Similar follow-up projects are being developed.

The full report of the pilot imitative is available below (hyperlink).

During meetings held on November 13-14, Member States and UN actors came together to discuss strategies for peacebuilding and sustaining peace in the Sahel region. This began with the annual session of the Peacebuilding Commission (PBC), a full day, interactive meeting that focused on themes of partnerships, and the role of women and youth in peacebuilding in the Sahel. The annual session was then followed the next day with a joint half-day meeting of the Peacebuilding Commission and Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) as it held a discussion centered on the topic of the linkages between climate change and challenges for peacebuilding and sustaining peace in the region.

QUNO joined a small number of organizations who spoke at the PBC’s annual session, with New York Director, Andrew Tomlinson, representing the organization. Joining Member States and UN colleagues as they reflected on the UN Support Plan for the Sahel, Mr. Tomlinson reminded participants of the centrality of inclusion in the development and implementation of strategies for peace. He noted that “the emphasis…on the need to have a single, shared theory of change for external accompaniment for the people of the Sahel is vital, but while moving to consensus and coherence from the top down is important, we also cannot forget the need to build our analysis from the bottom up, to involve affected communities, including women and youth, in our understanding of the drivers and dynamics of the situation.”

As the only civil society organization to participate in the joint PBC-ECOSOC meeting, QUNO brought forward reflections on the impact of peacebuilding for discussions on and strategies to address climate change. Mr. Tomlinson shared that, “this morning we have heard a lot about resilience – ways of supporting communities to be more robust in the face of stress. (…) And what a peacebuilding lens provides here to the climate change discussion is the insight that resilience is also enhanced by accompanying communities and societies in supporting their ability to process and transform climate-related disagreements, disputes and grievances. In this way, part of the support needed is to identify what capacities exist within these communities for dispute resolution and mediation, including the important role of women, and then to provide training and resources to grow those endogenous resources.”

QUNO looks forward to continuing its engagement with these bodies to support sustainable peacebuilding policy development and implementation that addresses key drivers of conflict and fragility and includes a diversity of voices – particularly affected communities.

To watch QUNO’s intervention at the PBC, please view this link, beginning at 1:32:34.

To watch QUNO’s intervention at the joint PBC/ECOSOC meeting, please view this link, beginning at 2:34:40.

September 21 marks the International Day of Peace, which was established in 1981 by a unanimous resolution in the UN’s General Assembly. To mark the day, QUNO and over 80 additional peacebuilding organizations from throughout the world issued a statement to United Nations Member States that brings attention to peace concerns.

As noted by QUNO NY's Director, Andrew Tomlinson, “in many cases, governments are pursuing security using militarized approaches, either in the absence of, or in isolation from, policies that decrease exclusion and inequality – core drivers of conflict. If we are to have a hope of eliminating extreme poverty, fostering peaceful and prosperous societies, and addressing the root causes of conflict, then governments need to urgently re-align their priorities."

The statement calls on governments and the international community to:

• Fully embrace the commitments to peace in the 2030 Agenda
• Reaffirm a commitment to human rights, the foundation for human dignity and just societies
• Foster social resilience by strengthening inclusion and addressing inequality
• Think local and act global: recommit to multilateralism as a safeguard for the most vulnerable
• Protect and support civil society in fostering sustainable peace

Additionally, QUNO distributed a press release on the statement, which was shared widely with media contacts covering the United Nations.

On Wednesday 12th September QUNO delivered a statement during the Interactive Dialogue with the Working Group on arbitrary detention, focusing on the revision and update of Deliberation 5, on deprivation of liberty of migrants.

The statement focused on the clarity on criteria for lawful use of immigration, and highlighted elements of the deliberation focused on the prohibition of the deprivation of liberty of children, the duty of individualised assessment, and the presumption of alternatives to detention. It tied these aspects of the Deliberation to the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular migration, and asked the Working Group to consider how they will work with States to support and advise them on the implementation of the Compact.