At the Opening Ceremony of Geneva Peace Week 2021, our Representative for Climate Change, Lindsey Fielder Cook was part of the speaker panel to discuss ways forward for environment, climate change and peace. 

Lindsey joined live from COP26 to implore the critical role of global, regional and local climate action to avoid catastrophic climate change, while emphasising that “climate change is symptomatic of a greater challenge of how to live sustainably and justly on earth.” 

Building on its long-term work on integrating human rights and sustaining peace, QUNO has been supporting work led by the three rapporteurs in charge of implementing resolution 38/18 on ‘the contribution of the Human Rights Council (HRC) to the prevention of human rights violations’.  In particular, QUNO has focused on how the HRC can more effectively work with all UN pillars to prevent those violations which, if left unaddressed, could lead to violent conflict.

In April, QUNO's Florence Foster was invited to speak during the first Intersessional seminar on the contribution of the Human Rights Council to the prevention of human rights violations (resolution 38/18). Florence noted that human rights violations are both the cause and effect of destructive conflict, and they therefore play a central role in early warning, prevention of destructive conflict, and in providing the basis for accountability through to rebuilding societies.

QUNO's December 2017 issue of the Geneva Reporter newsletter is now available online.

QUNO will be undertaking a project collaboration with Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) and Lancaster University Law School. The project titled ‘Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR) and Sustaining Peace - Developing New Insights into Peacebuilding’ is partially funded by Lancaster University Faculty of Social Science and Lancaster University Law School and will run until July 2017.