In February 2016, QUNO Geneva and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) hosted an expert meeting on integrating human rights, peacebuilding and prevention of violent conflict within the United Nations systems.

The meeting addressed the following questions:

• What advantages would it bring for UN work on peace and security to draw on existing human rights resources to increase effectiveness in peacebuilding and prevention of violent conflict?
• What have been the consequences of the failure to work on the links between human rights and sustaining peace?
• What are the pragmatic steps that could be taken within existing resources in UN institutions that would increase effectiveness, particularly of prevention of violent conflict?

This discussion took place in advance of the UN High-Level Debate on International Peace and Security, held in New York on 10-11 May 2016. The two-page briefing handout included below summarises the key points which were raised at the meeting. 

Representative for Climate Change, Lindsey Fielder Cook, reflects on the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement.

Over the course of three years leading up to COP21, QUNO engaged in quiet diplomacy at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), offering delegates a more 'human' space in what could seem at times like an inhuman environment.

The report, available below, offers insight into this process, thoughts on the Agreement itself and a vision for what might lie ahead.

The most critical work begins now.

Review of the activities of QUNO in 2015

This policy brief consolidates lessons learned from an in-depth literature review on small-scale farmer (SSF) innovation systems and a two-day expert consultation on the same topic that QUNO hosted in May 2015. 

The key message here is that small-scale farmer innovation systems are unique relative to more ‘formal’ agricultural innovation systems. For this reason, the types of policies that are put in place to encourage innovation in agriculture require a fundamental reconsideration.

In this issue:

• ​Nelson Mandela Rules ​
• Conflict Sensitivity in Business 
• ​Highlights from QUNO New York 
• ​Recent publications
• QUNO Q&A with Rachel Evans 
• News in Brief 
• Project Brief: An interactive trade policy tool 

QUNO New York Director, Andrew Tomlinson, was invited to speak at a meeting of the Washington-based Conflict Prevention and Resolution Forum on 'The Future of Goal 16: Peace and Inclusion in the Sustainable Development Goals', along with Lynn Wagner of IISD and Cynthia Clapp-Wincek, a consultant and policy expert with the US government, in a session chaired by Liz Hume of the Alliance for Peacebuilding. Andrew's remarks focused on the universal application of the peaceful, just and inclusive societies agenda within the SDGs. The lively discussion included comments on the applicability of this approach to the US.

This literature review marks QUNO’s step back from focusing on intellectual property rights (IPR) to ask more broadly: What are the types of innovation in agriculture that we as a global community want to encourage? From here, we explore the types of policy measures that might do so — including but not limited to IPR.

Innovation in agriculture is most commonly associated with the development and transfer of technologies to farmers (innovation for farmers), or more recently, farmers’ participation in research and development projects to improve the relevancy and usefulness of its outputs (innovation with farmers). However the innovation that happens on the farm (innovation by farmers) has been largely overlooked. Small-scale farmer innovation is not widely recognized within academia or international bodies relating to trade, intellectual property rights, plant genetic resources or biodiversity conservation.

As a result, efforts to promote innovation in agriculture have mostly be concentrated on creating incentives for private sector investment in research and development — commonly by establishing strong intellectual property rights regimes, ensuring open access to markets, and increasing technology adoption rates among farmers. These strategies are generally focused on promoting innovation for and with farmers, rather than nurturing the innovation that is happening all the time on the farm.

The key points distilled from this relatively nascent body of literature include:

• Farmers are driven to innovate for many different reasons, which include but go beyond opportunities to participate in commercial markets.
• Farmers innovate through informal networks of social and economic relations in an iterative and cumulative process, the results of which are not easily attributed to individuals.
• The scope of what is considered ‘innovation’ is broader, including but not limited to the development of new technologies, the adaption of new technologies developed elsewhere to suit local conditions and needs, the active maintenance and further development of plant genetic resources and associated knowledge, and social / organizational innovation to mitigate the affects of climate change and market volatility.  
• Outside entities may support small-scale farmer innovation by increasing exposure of their innovative capacity, facilitating knowledge sharing, providing supplementary support where required and providing financial resources directly to farmers.

There remain significant gaps in the literature:

• The contributions of small-scale farmers to local and global food security, rural livelihoods and agroecosystem resilience is not well documented in academia. More evidence-based research is required.
• Efforts to measure farmers’ innovation in absence of outside intervention are in their infancy.
• There is also limited evaluation of the quality of support currently available to innovative farmers, and it is difficult to isolate farmers’ capacity to innovate while international organizations play an increasingly visible role in participatory research. 

The rules governing international trade in agriculture are often vague and ambiguous, requiring significant legal and administrative capacity to uncover opportunities to support food security and rural livelihoods without breaking WTO rules. This report identifies some of the measures that may be used to help advance developing countries’ food security in ways that comply with international obligations to reduce trade-distorting domestic supports and market protections.

In July, the United Nations Security Council met in an Arria-formula meeting on Gaza, co-chaired by the Permanent Missions of Malaysia and Jordan to the United Nations. The event was organised by the Israel Palestine NGO Working Group, of which QUNO NY is a member.

This booklet of the speaker's presentations has now been published. The speakers included Mr. Vance Culbert from Norwegian Refugee Council, Mr. Ardi Imseis of Cambridge University, Ms. Tania Hary from Gisha, and Dr. Sara Roy from the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University.