QUNO’s Human Impacts of Climate Change Programme recently compiled an official submission to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders profiling stories of Quaker Environmental Human Rights Defenders. Gathering testimony from Quaker individuals and organizations in Europe and Africa, the submission upholds actions of conscience that Quakers have engaged in as guided by their faith and commitment to the values of stewardship, sustainability, and integrity.
The submission provides a unique and specific focus on the efforts of Quakers because a significant number of high-profile climate change protest action originated in the Quaker community. The report gathers inspiration from their successes while also sharing the risks and retaliation they have experienced as a result of expressing concern over insufficient government action to transform human activities driving planetary crises. The submission will inform that work of U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders, Mary Lawlor, as she prepares her October 2025 report to the U.N. General Assembly on human rights defenders working on climate change and a just transition. QUNO is grateful to those individuals and groups who shared their personal histories. Such courageous and conscientious acts will further climate justice and calls attention to the rights these defenders are working to protect. In addition to personal stories from Quakers around the world, the submission also offers recommendations for how states and U.N. bodies should advance in protecting environmental human rights defenders.
