Resources for:

Sustaining Peace

January 2024

Booklet: Sustaining peace and human rights towards just, peaceful, and inclusive societies

QUNO Geneva's Peace & Disarmament program works to highlight and reinforce the inextricable link between human rights and peace and to ensure that they are seen as mutually reinforcing throughout the UN's work at the policy and practice level, reaching out o a diverse range of stakeholders and in doing so to promote just, peaceful, and inclusive societies. Read more about our most recent activities and work on this in the booklet!

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November 2023

Integrating Human Rights and Sustaining Peace: Exploring Special Procedures

The report 'Integrating Human Rights and Sustaining Peace: Exploring Special Procedures' is based on a joint project undertaken by the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) in Geneva and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), in collaboration with the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs' Peacebuilding Support Office (DPPA/PBSO). The joint project sought to pilot activities to explore how special procedures of the Human Rights Council could better integrate human rights and sustaining peace in their work and enhance prevention of both conflict and human rights violations across all pillars of the United Nations (UN). While the report does not claim to be comprehensive, it hopes to serve as a basis for continued reflection, learning and discussions in the lead-up to 2024 Summit of the Future, when the UN system is prioritizing prevention as illustrated in the policy brief on the 'New Agenda for Peace'.

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March 2021

Sustaining Peace: How can human rights help?

Sustaining Peace: How can human rights help? 2016 – 2020 retrospective builds on learnings from a joint project with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), which focused on Operative Paragraph 11 of the 2016 Sustaining Peace resolutions. The report reflects on a selection of key developments, opportunities, and challenges in integrating human rights in sustaining peace in relation to intergovernmental outcomes, policy frameworks and instruments, and UN reform processes. While the report does not claim to be comprehensive, it hopes to serve as a basis for continued reflection, learning and discussions following the 2020 Peacebuilding Architecture Review and resulting twin resolutions.

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December 2018

The role of decentralized renewable energy in peacebuilding

Can energy ever be used as a tool for peacebuilding instead of a cause of conflict? What peacebuilding tools are already at our disposal for reducing the likelihood of violent conflict related to energy extraction and natural resource stress related to climate change? This publication explores the role of decentralized renewable energy as a peacebuilding tool, in global efforts for a net-zero carbon energy transition. 

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April 2018

Integrating Human Rights and Sustaining Peace

This report brings together the learning from a project undertaken from February 2017 to April 2018 to explore the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) as a vehicle for better linking human rights and sustaining peace. The aim of this project was to contribute to overcoming the fragmentation within the United Nations (UN) and promoting the value of integrated action between peacebuilding and human rights actors on the ground and in the UN system by using the UPR to explore present practice and untapped potential within a specific process. This report is intended to provide input to the discussions following the Secretary-General’s Report to the General Assembly on Sustaining Peace1 and to consideration of how to take this work forward in the UN. 

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March 2018

Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and Sustaining Peace: An introduction

This joint publication by the Quaker United Nations Office, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and Lancaster University demonstrates how economic, social and cultural rights can contribute to a sustaining peace approach to peacebuilding. The report is intended to stress the importance of such rights to effective conflict prevention, peace-making, transition and post-conflict peacebuilding. It further seeks to highlight challenges encountered in utilising such rights as part of a sustaining peace approach but also to illustrate developing and good practice through concrete examples and recommendations.

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February 2012

Geneva Reporter

QUNO Geneva's newsletter for November 2011 to February 2012. Featured stories:

- Preventing Armed Violence: the Geneva Declaration Review Conference
- The Unknown Impacts of Seeds Policies: Exploring the Effects of UPOV
- News from QUNO New York
- Watching the Climate Change Negotiations
- News in Brief, Jardins Ouverts, and Publications

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December 2011

In & Around the UN

QUNO New York newsletter from December 2011.

Features articles on:

  • UN experts from China
  • Letter from the Director
  • Letter from QUNO Geneva
  • Programme Assistant Corner
  • Restorative Justice and Peacebuilding
  • Prevention Seminar with the Security Council
  • Quaker Collaboration on the Horn of Africa

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October 2011

Geneva Reporter

QUNO Geneva Newsletter for July 2011 to October 2011. Featured stories:

  • Sustainability: Inspiration for QUNO from Britain Yearly Meeting Gathering
  • REDD - Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation
  • News from QUNO New York
  • Engaging with Civil Society: Voices on Armed Violence in the Balkans
  • News in Brief
  • If My Parents Go to Prison, What Happens to Me?

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June 2011

Paths Toward Peace - Best Practices in Violence Reduction and Development in South and Southeast Asia Magazine

Paths Toward Peace - Best Practices in VIolence Reduction and Development in South and Southeast Asia, Comunidad Segura Good Practices Magazine, Year III, number 7.

Brings stories from Asia as sources of inspiration and reflection on armed violence prevention, conflict resolution, post conflict reconstruction and promoting livelihoods and development in the region. It features best practices from Civil Society Organisations that participated in the  “Regional Seminar on Armed Violence and Development in South and Southeast Asia” held in Kathmandu, Nepal, March 2011.

Comunidad Segura “Good Practices” magazine aims to serve as a source of information on grassroots initiatives that can help to inform advocacy campaigns and national and international public policy and programming.

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November 2010

PeaceBuilding From the Ground Up - Preventing and Reducing Armed Violence

PeaceBuilding from the Ground Up - preventing and reducing armed violence, Comunidad Segura Good Practices Magazine, Year II, Number 4.

Brings stories from East Africa as sources of inspiration and reflection on armed violence and development. It features good practices from the civil society participants in the 2009 seminar  “Creating a Community of Practice on Armed Violence and Development (AV&D) in East Africa” that took place in Nairobi in November 2010. This seminar gathered civil society practitioners directly involved in the design and implementation of AV&D work. The aim was to highlight evidence of good practice in AV&D programming.

Comunidad Segura “Good Practices” magazine aims to serve as a source of information on grassroots initiatives that can help to inform advocacy campaigns and national and international public policy and programming.

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January 2010

Ripples into Waves - Locally led Peacebuilding

This paper aims to demonstrate that peacebuilding initiatives can be led by local rather than international players and that this approach can work successfully on a large scale. The paper summarises four peacebuilding initiatives, all more or less locally led, which have operated on a large scale, and which have had real impact in ending violent conflict. It sets out steps that could be taken to move from current practice, in which local capacity for peacebuilding is viewed as marginal, to one where it is regarded as a central element of any strategy for managing conflict.

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June 2009

Peacebuilding in Geneva: Mapping the Landscape

Geneva is a major global centre of peacebuilding expertise, and the Geneva peacebuilding sector is very large and diverse in terms of number of organisations, number of staff, geographical coverage, and size of budgets. Geneva thus has a critical contribution to make in the international field of peacebuilding.

With the creation of the United Nations (UN) Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) in 2005, a group of institutions working on peacebuilding undertook to explore how their constituencies could add value to the new international peacebuilding architecture, through a series of consultations and public discussions. This two-year dialogue led to a mapping of the Geneva peacebuilding landscape, the outcomes of which are presented in this publication.

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January 2009

Geneva Reporter

QUNO Geneva's newsletter from November 2008 to January 2009. Featured stories:

  • The Future of Armed Violence and Development
  • Universal Periodic Review
  • Fisheries Subsidies Negotiations at the WTO
  • Arms Control and the Art of Putting People First
  • Caroline Dommen joins QUNO Staff Team and other staff news

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October 2008

Geneva Reporter

QUNO Geneva's newsletter from August to October 2008. Featured articles:

  • Conscientious Objection to Military Service
  • Geneva Declaration Summit
  • Transfer of Technology and Developing countries
  • CD Impasse Continues - 12 Years and Counting (Out?)
  • Staff News

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July 2008

Disarmament and Development: One Coin, Two Sides? A Briefing for Friends

This Briefing presents QUNO's work relating to demand for small arms, and how this led to the creation of the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development. The Declaration’s unique approach will be of interest to Quaker service organizations and other partners working in fields such as arms control, public health, development and poverty eradication. This report aims to consolidate understanding of the links between armed violence and development across these various communities.

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June 2008

Disarmament and Development: One Coin, Two Sides? A briefing for Friends

This background paper aims to give Friends an overview of the “Geneva Declaration” process, and of QUNO’s involvement in it. This process seeks to highlight the links between armed violence and development, and to focus international attention on the reasons for which there is a demand for small arms and light weapons, rather than focusing, as is traditionally the case, on controlling the supply and transfer of small arms and light weapons.

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January 2006

Demanding Attention: Addressing the Dynamics of Small Arms Demand

This is a joint publication by QUNO and the Small Arms Survey.  It summarizes the findings of a multi-year project that included research in Brazil, Colombia, South Africa, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands. The paper aimed to inform the debates at the 2006 Review Conference (reviewing implementation of the 2001 UN Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects). Most international debates focus on the supply-related dimensions of small arms problems, which include, for instance, regulating arms brokers, establishing controls on arms transfers etc. This paper brings a necessary, complementary view, to broaden the international community’s understanding of those demand factors that underpin and drive small arms dynamics. The paper provides some practical suggestions about how demand issues may be taken up in the future.

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