The Child Rights Connect Working Group on Children of Incarcerated Parents, of which QUNO is co-convenor, is pleased to share a new Briefing on the Rights of Children of Parents who are Incarcerated in the context of Covid-19, with the support of Penal Reform International. 

On 30 April, QUNO was pleased to co-host “Dialogue and Mutual Understanding: the Role of Young People in Preventing Conflict,” a virtual discussion that brought together over 35 United Nations (UN), civil society, and Member State experts as part of the Civil Society-UN Prevention Platform’s 2020 discussion series on prevention. The Platform’s discussions aim to support and contribute to building the collective capacity of the UN community to advance prevention particularly as it relates to the Secretary-General’s vision for prevention. 

The UN was born out of the global crisis of the second world war. Now, 75 years later, another crisis faces us. How can we both reaffirm the Charter commitment to collective action and bring to this crisis the lessons we have learned about offering integrated support in partnership with the communities we accompany, leaving no one behind?

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.

Read QUNO New York's newsletter, In & Around the UN, featuring articles on:

• Bridging the Gap between Peace and Human Rights
• Civil-Society UN Prevention Platform Launches a Discussion Series on Prevention
• Future of the Peacebuilding Fund

and more from New York.

As part of its ongoing work on the human rights of migrants, QUNO delivered an oral statement to the Human Rights Council, urging the Council to take more focused and sustained action on the issue. Laurel Townhead, QUNO’s Representative for Human Rights and Refugees, listed the names of three of the thousands of migrants who have lost their lives, drawing attention to the individual human beings behind migration statistics.

On 4 February, the Civil Society-UN Prevention Platform (the Platform) held its third annual informal, off the record briefing with Under-Secretary-General (USG) and Senior Policy Advisor, Ms. Ana María Menéndez. Ms. Menéndez has played a central role in Secretary-General António Guterres’s focus on prevention since starting the position in June 2017.