On June 7, QUNO NY held a discussion on Sustainable Development Goal 16 titled “Spotlight on SDG 16: Providing Access to Justice for All’. The event brought together UN diplomats, colleagues from the UN system and civil society to unpack the ‘justice’ element of SDG 16, delving further into both reproductive and environmental justice. The discussion centered around the intersectionality of equal access to justice, strategies for translating SDG targets into tangible national laws and action plans and methods to improve data collection on equal access to justice.

QUNO New York’s UN Representative, Megan Schmidt, delivered a statement during the virtual multi-stakeholder consultation convened on 16 March by the Permanent Missions of Namibia and Germany. The consultation provided an opportunity to share first impressions on the Secretary-General’s proposal for an Emergency Platform. In her statement Megan highlighted key issues that are missing from the proposal for an Emergency Platform, including an emphasis on contributions to peace and the inclusion of youth in decision making processes.

The Civil Society-UN Prevention Platform, co-facilitated by QUNO and GPPAC, focused its annual discussion series on developing a joint submission for the New Agenda for Peace (NA4P), due to be published in June 2023. This paper aims to contribute to the drafting process for the NA4P and underscores areas of concern and interest from the discussion series that Platform partners and participants would like to see highlighted in the NA4P. This paper outlines six key proposals and an additional three that the Platform believes will ensure a comprehensive and forward-looking policy through the NA4P.

On 27 April diplomats and UN officials will gather for a High-Level meeting at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly to discuss the challenges and opportunities facing financing for peacebuilding. In her piece, UN Representative, Megan Schmidt, brings forward the learning and messages from her report, Building Peace in Times of Crisis, that relate to peacebuilding financing across the humanitarian-development-peace nexus. This includes: ensuring sustainable and flexible UN capacities through funding across the “nexus;” incentivizing financing for programming that is inclusive and meets the needs of communities; and having funding mechanisms that allow staff the flexibility needed to be responsive in complex environments.

The International Day of Peace falls on 21 September each year and serves as a day devoted to strengthening commitments  towards peace and non-violence. This is the sixth year that QUNO has facilitated the creation and distribution of a sign on statement supported by peacebuilding organizations across the world to engage Member States and the UN system. The 2021 Statement brought together over 200 organizations calling on the international community to refocus on peace, justice and inclusion in development, crisis response and efforts to address climate change and its impacts.

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

As a member of the Joint UN-Civil Society Working Group that developed the Guidelines, QUNO representative, Megan Schmidt, delivered this intervention during the global virtual launch of the UN System-Wide Community Engagement Guidelines on Peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace. QUNO’s intervention centered on the importance of inclusivity throughout the development of the Guidelines and highlighted the emphasis on a people-centered approach and local leadership that is reflected in the final document.

Read QUNO New York’s newsletter, In & Around the UN, featuring articles on:

• Building Peace through Reconciliation
• Supporting Country-level UN Capacities for Prevention
• 15 Years of UN Peacebuilding

and more from New York.

21 September marks the International Day of Peace, a day devoted to strengthening the ideals of peace and a commitment towards non-violence. Since 2015, QUNO New York has led the call from peacebuilding organizations around the world in issuing a statement to Member States and the UN system. In 2020, QUNO, along with over 170 peacebuilding organizations called for peace to be mainstreamed in the response to COVID-19, for policies to be inclusive, and for the global community to recommit to multilateralism. In addition, QUNO distributed a press release on the statement, which was shared widely with media contacts covering the United Nations. 

Every five years the UN undertakes a review of the Peacebuilding Architecture (PBA) to assess the system’s progress towards peacebuilding and sustaining peace as well as to outline priority areas for the coming years. QUNO, drawing upon its long-standing history of exploring the topic of reconciliation in peacebuilding, submitted a thematic paper, Building Peace through Reconciliation, to contribute to the 2020 PBA review. The document focuses on three key areas, namely: the definitional challenges of reconciliation; reconciliation and the Peacebuilding Architecture; and key messages on reconciliation.