Since our last newsletter in May 2021, QUNO has continued to adjust to the large changes brought about by COVID-19, as well as welcoming new staff and preparing to say goodbye to others. In the past months, the threats to peace that the world faces have become clearer, and what we must achieve has grown. As our outgoing Director Andrew Tomlinson noted in his farewell letter, “For QUNO, the challenge now becomes to demonstrate the centrality of peacebuilding approaches and tools to all global efforts to transform our world and respond to the challenges we face, to work for a continuing focus on peace, justice and inclusion, not only in development, but also in crisis response and in addressing the climate emergency.”

The November 2021 newsletter shares highlights from the work carried out by our New York office during these past few months. Articles cover recent staff additions and departures, following up on the 2020 discussion series QUNO hosted with the Civil Society-UN Prevention Platform, considering the year ahead with the UN General Assembly 76, and sharing about the International Day of Peace statement for 2021 that we organized. We also have another article in our recent series spotlighting a member of our Quaker United Nations Committee.