2023 is an opportunity for us to celebrate 75 years of Quaker peace and justice work at the UN. Read our newest QUNO Review to learn more about the work of our New York and Geneva offices during this past year, and to learn about the work ahead.
QUNO Review 2023.pdf 5.77 MB The Global Stocktake (GST) is used to monitor the implementation and evaluate the collective progress made in achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. The FWCC has signed a joint submission on views on the approach to the consideration of output components of the GST. Read the submission to learn about the human rights outcomes that civil society organizations are calling for.
Quakers support Indigenous peoples’ rights, based on our commitment to peace and justice. We recognise the historical and ongoing injustice faced by Indigenous peoples and the direct role historically played by Quakers in the genocide of Indigenous peoples. Today, Quaker support for Indigenous peoples in their struggles for justice has taken form at both the community, national and international level, including long-standing support to establish the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Over the years, QUNO has backed efforts to secure and strengthen the rights of Indigenous peoples, predominantly through supporting the work of the Canadian Friends Service Committee (CFSC). In the context of the climate negotiations, QUNO’s Human Impacts of Climate Change programme advocates for human rights-based, urgent and ambitious climate action and raises up the voices of those most marginalized and vulnerable. We have been observers to the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform since its first meeting in 2018.
LCIPP__Beatrice Liese.pdf 185.04 KB The 2016 Paris Agreement is an international agreement on climate change binding every country that has signed to act on the climate response. Countries are required to outline their climate actions through “Nationally Determined Contributions,” with developed countries leading on mitigation and finance. This 2-sider explains what the Paris Agreement is and how to get involved in
making sure that countries are responding to it.
International environmental law is central to climate action. For example, the 2015 Paris Agreement, is a universal climate change agreement through which both developing and developed countries work together on climate mitigation and adaptation. This 2-sider offers an overview of some of the key agreements and sources of international environmental law that can benefit local and national climate action efforts.
International Environmental Law.pdf 636.9 KB The climate negotiations under the UNFCCC are the main form of international climate action. Yet, there are many international and local initiatives outside of multilateral negotiations that push forward ambition and creativity on climate action. This 2-sider features a couple of these projects, offering insight into actions being taken below or beyond the state level by both state and non-state actors.
Incorporating human rights into climate policies and actions
is known as a human rights-based approach. Human
rights-based approaches ensure public inclusion and promote fairness, leading to more coherent, legitimate and sustainable policy outcomes. Whilst some countries resist human rights, human rights-based approaches ensure that climate action is approached as both a technical effort to cut emissions and as an effort to address human rights and social inequality. This 2-sider offers a brief introduction to the topic alongside inspiring examples from all over the world of what is being done to protect people and planet.
The impacts of climate change are shaping some of the oldest human practices: moving and creating places where we feel safe and at home. This 2-sider focuses on climate-induced movement, and the specific international laws that protect people who may need to move due to climate change.
Climate Change & People on the Move.pdf 467.15 KB The different organizations and committees that make up the international human rights system work to promote and protect what individuals and communities need to be safe and well. This 2-sider explores how climate change is addressed within the human rights framework and how to get involved in advocating for climate action that addresses human rights and social inequality.
Human Impacts of Climate Change Representative, Lindsey Fielder Cook reflects on the outcomes of COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh.
COP27 reflections Final.pdf 242.62 KB As part of the COP27 side event on climate justice in the Arctic co-hosted by QUNO, the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, Friends of the World Consultation Committee, British Yearly Meeting, and Quaker Earthcare Witness, a crysophere expert shared about the latest effects of climate change in the Arctic. Pam Pearson, director of the International Crysophere Climate Initiative, shared the latest cryosphere science, growing losses, and global impacts. Access her powerpoint here.
"We cannot negotiate with the melting point of ice."
Climate Justice Arctic COP27.pdf 2.32 MB Following the decision at COP27 for new funding arrangements to be established in order to address the loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change, QUNO offers this working paper. It is focused on innovative and fair sources of finance for addressing loss and damage. This is a working paper that is open to receiving comments (see end note on how to share comments). It is offered in the spirit of the polluter pays principle without endorsement of any arrangement.
This is an informal analysis of the decision passed at COP27 on new funding arrangements for addressing loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change. It is offered in the spirit of increasing accessibility and understanding of the text.
ON 10 November 2022, QUNO Human Impacts of Climate Change representative, Lindsey Fielder Cook, spoke on an expert panel to over 60 country negotiators and civil society at the Global Stocktake Technical Dialogue on international cooperation for holistic and integrated approaches to addressing the climate crisis. Lindsey began by asking the negotiators and civil society to engage from both the head and heart before speaking on what holistic and integrated approaches mean, and then celebrating several recent examples of international cooperation which represent such approaches. Afterwards, Lindsey reflected on holistic and integrated approaches that can dramatically scale up climate action but need greater international cooperation that the Global Stocktake engagement can signal. Several such approaches included rights-based approaches, the importance of sustainable and just economic systems, as well as what real human security, and how the GST can embrace language of responsibility.
GST TD__UNFCCC__Nov 2022.pdf 198.2 KB In October 2022, QUNO joined representatives from the Friends World Committee for Consultation, Friends Committee on National Legislation, American Friends Service Committee, Canadian Friends Service Committee, the Quaker Council on European Affairs and Quaker Peace and Social Witness in releasing this statement on the Peace Testimony and the ongoing war in Ukraine.
QUNO's September 2022 issue of the Geneva Reporter newsletter is available below. This issue includes a welcome letter from our Director Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge and reporting on the International Migration Review Forum from the Human Rights & Refugees team. It also includes updates from our Peace and Disarmament (P&D), Human Impacts of Climate Change (HICC) and Sustainable and Just Economic Systems (SJES) programmes.
The following is QUNO’s submission to the United Nations Secretary General’s consultation on "Net Zero", with an emphasis on real transformation of root causes driving climate change, and avoidance of "greenwashing" under some ‘net zero’ approaches. In particular, the need for rapid reduction and use of fossil fuels for a safer chance to remain within a 1.5C temperature rise limit. Along with highlighting the need for rapid reduction, the submission draws attention to threats in renewable energy investment being sidelined by investment into geo-engineering such as off-sets and carbon capture storage, the latter technology being expensive, not yet available to scale, prone to emission leakage and enabling ongoing fossil fuel extraction and burning activities. This submission draws attention to the actions we can take to achieve net zero emissions and emphasizes the importance of conserving and restoring ecosystems.
FWCC/QUNO submitted in September 2022 a report to the Katowice Committee of Experts on the Impacts of the Implementation of Response Measures (KCI). The Committee – which features representatives from each of the five UN regional groups, one member from the least developed countries, one member from the small island developing States and two members from relevant intergovernmental organizations - was established in 2018 to produce work on the impacts – both positive and negative - of responses to climate change taken by different actors. QUNO has been an observer of KCI meetings throughout the course of these years, advocating for responses that take human rights into account.
The reports focuses on best practice approaches to climate action. It also reflects how incorporating the human rights of people in poverty promotes environmental, social, and economic co-benefits of climate change policies. Our input to the KCI was grounded in three principles: what is 1)Fair, 2) Ambitious, and 3) Effective. Observations and examples of good/promising practices were made in the areas of energy; housing; planned obsolescence and life cycle of production; the impacts of transition on employment; and land use, including food waste and diet.
The materials of the reports have also been shared with the United Nations Rapporteur on the extreme poverty and human rights.
To read the full submission, click the link below.
The following brief was submitted to the Human Rights Advisory Committee in response to a questionnaire on the impact of new technologies for climate protection on the enjoyment of human rights. The submission outlines the human rights abuse concerns linked to geo and climate engineering technologies and includes detailed references to findings from the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) AR6 Report.
The Quaker United Nations Office in Geneva, under the Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC), is the only accredited faith-based observer organisation actively engaged at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). From 14-27 February, the IPCC held an intergovernmental meeting to finalise a Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) of its report, Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. This is the second of three sections completing the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), which collates the latest climate science – what is happening, why, and what we can do to transform human activities driving global heating - and involves hundreds of scientists worldwide and thousands of peer-reviewed studies. Once approved by governments, IPCC reports have been used by citizens to in turn hold their governments to account for insufficient action on climate change. During the IPCC meeting, Lindsey Fielder Cook, Representative for the Human Impacts of Climate Change at QUNO Geneva, made 29 interventions on behalf of FWCC. Her interventions can be read in the attached document below.
