QUNO organised a side event at the UN Human Rights Council on 4 March on “Procedural Rights and the Environment: The Principle 10 Negotiations in Latin America and the Caribbean”. The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, John Knox, the Ambassadors of Chile and Costa Rica and Marcos Orellana of the Centre for International Environmental Law (CIEL), provided an update on what all agreed is the most significant development around the right to information, public participation in decision-making and access to justice in environmental matters at the moment.

In this video, excerpted from a longer film shown at the Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) World Plenary Meeting held in Peru in January 2016, Human Rights & Refugees discusses the work of our Human Rights & Refugees programme.

In this video, excerpted from a longer film shown at the Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC) World Plenary Meeting held in Peru in January 2016, Diane Hendrick explains the work of our Peace & Disarmament programme. 

The Peace and Disarmament programme grows out of a long Quaker history of working for peace, understanding that this means more than the absence of overt violence and has fundamentally to do with social and economic justice and political participation. Where these are denied, the roots of violence can be found. 

With the dust settling on December's climate negotiations in Paris, QUNO's Lindsey Fielder Cook and Katherine Knox from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation were invited by journalism platform the IPF to share their reflections on the conference.

In the interview, they discuss the climate change work that QUNO and JRF have been undertaking and some of the implications of the outcome document, as well as sharing their experiences of the tense, dramatic and ultimately successful two weeks.

Working as a consultant for QUNO Geneva, Lynn Finnegan, with assistance from Diane Hendrick, has authored a chapter entitled “All Voices Heard: A Conflict Prevention Approach to Land and Natural Resources” in the newly-published book Land Restoration: Reclaiming Landscapes for a Sustainable Future, edited by Ilan Chabay, Martin Frick and Jennifer Helgeson.

This report first provides a historical overview of both the concept of food security and the incorporation of agriculture into international trade negotiations. It then turns to the relationship between food security policy options and the WTO’s trade rules, and highlights opportunities for governments to implement policies that support food security while meeting their international obligations. It concludes by laying out a range of policy measures to enhance food security, assessing the compatibility of each with WTO regulations. 

Within our Trade and Investment in Agriculture work, QUNO has been developing an online tool to help explain the complex relationship between food security measures and the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) trade rules. These are liable to come into conflict and the aim of the tool is to help policy makers shape their policies in ways that are mutually compatible and context-appropriate.