QUNO Geneva is pleased to share the most recent issue of our Geneva Reporter newsletter and accompanying briefing paper on The Aarhus Convention. Other featured articles include updates on our A New Framework for Trade and Investment in Agriculture work, the Human Rights Council, UN Climate Summit, and Peace and Disarmament.

The New York office is please to share our most recent Newsletter, featuring articles on Burundi, Somalia, Peacebuilding, the post-2015 Development Agenda and the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

QUNO was invited to participate in the first ever UN Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) Annual Session in New York on June 23rd, which focused on Sustainable support for peacebuilding: the domestic and international aspects. Andrew Tomlinson, QUNO Director, made comments in the workshop sessions on “The importance of inclusion, transparency and consultation in revenue mobilization” and “Long-term accompaniment of societies in transition: a role for the PBC?”

In March, QUNO organized a side event at the Human Rights Council on “Procedural Rights and the Environment: Preventing conflict around water, land and food". Procedural rights include the right to information, public participation in decision-making and right to remedy and complement substantive rights such as the right to life or the right to food. Jonathan Woolley of QUNO chaired the event and the Permanent Representatives of Ethiopia and Chile to the UN in Geneva spoke on existing and planned legal frameworks relating to the environment in Africa and Latin America, respectively.

Quaker House welcomed many guests during the Eighth Session of the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals. QUNO and our colleagues focused on the topic of conflict prevention, post-conflict peacebuilding and the promotion of durable peace, rule of law and governance within the proposed framework for development post-2015 by engaging with side events and making statements.

On 19 and 20 February Diane Hendrick participated in the  seminar “Towards a more Coherent Peacebuilding Policy Community”, in Johannesburg organised by the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD), a Civil Society organisation based in South Africa, which specializes in the field of conflict analysis, resolution, interventions and management on the African continent.