QUNO UN representative Kavita Desai delivered an intervention at the multistakeholder consultations for the Summit of the Future convened by the Summit’s co-facilitators, the permanent missions of Germany and Namibia to the UN. Drawing on insights from the recently submitted Civil-Society UN Prevention Platform paper on the New Agenda for Peace, Kavita called for peace to be a focus, highlighting the need for the concrete and actionable steps to build peace to come out of the Summit.

In May 2022, QUNO launched a Youth Listening Exercise and activities that focus on strengthening youth inclusion and advocating for United Nations policies that reflect youth identified priorities. This work also seeks to engage with young people globally to discern the direction of QUNO’s work as it relates to the UN’s Youth, Peace and Security (YPS) agenda. The first listening exercise convened young people from across the United States via Zoom. This summary provides insights and reflections on key findings and emergent themes from that consultation.

Read QUNO New York’s November 2021 newsletter, In & Around the UN, featuring articles on:

• UN General Assembly 76: Forecasting the Year Ahead
• Committee Spotlight with Aletia Dundas
• QUNO Co-Hosts Virtual Dialogue on Prevention with UN, Civil Society, and Member States

And more from New York.

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

• UN Launch of Community Engagement Guidelines
• Committee Spotlight with Hezron Masitsa
• Interest Group at FWCC Section of the Americas Meeting

And more from New York.

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.

As the Secretary-General boldly states in his 2020 report on Peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace, “civil society engagement and participation is indispensable to peacebuilding.” Recognizing this essential role of civil society, the United Nations (UN) released Community Engagement Guidelines on Peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace (CEG), a system-wide guidance to enhance how the UN engages and partners with communities in the shared effort to build and sustain peace. This publication resulted from work carried out since 2019 by a joint UN-civil society working group, of which QUNO was one of three civil society partners.

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 to assess the system’s progress and impact for peacebuilding, identify remaining challenges and set the peacebuilding priorities for the coming years. QUNO, in partnership with the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC), submitted a set of recommendations to UN and Member State officials to inform and influence the 2020 review. The document focuses its messages on structural and operational partnerships, financing for peacebuilding and operational and policy coherence. 

On 16 April, the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO), in partnership with the United Nations (UN) Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO), convened an off-the-record virtual discussion with peacebuilding organization representatives from throughout the world. The discussion addressed two interrelated themes: firstly, the Peacebuilding Fund’s (PBF) annual Gender and Youth Promotion Initiative (GYPI) funding calls; and, secondly, the impacts of COVID-19 on peacebuilding. This document provides an overview of the key themes, issues and ideas that emerged during the discussion, with no attribution to participants given the off-the-record nature of the meeting.