About
The Quaker United Nations Office promotes justice, peace and sustainability at the United Nations. Our priorities are based on the concerns of Quakers worldwide. Through different areas of work in Geneva and New York, we seek to ensure that the UN system and community of nations support and uphold the dignity of all, so that justice and peace can flourish, and our shared home can be nurtured.
The Quaker testimonies of equality, peace, integrity, community, simplicity, and sustainability guide our work. We bring these values to our work on the three pillars of the United Nations: human rights, peace, and sustainable development. Over the decades, we have seen how multilateral approaches to challenges affecting all humanity can lead to transformative international laws and norms that promote more just, peaceful, and sustainable societies.
To do this work, we build relationships with diplomats, UN officials, and civil society colleagues, offering policy expertise, research, and advocating for just, peaceful, and sustainable solutions. We encourage all members of the UN community to remain vigilant about the human impacts of their decision-making.
The expertise and experience of communities suffering violent conflict and injustice are central to the UN’s efforts to address those conflicts and injustices. We use our role to expand the space for this expertise and experience, bringing those voices into the room.
New York City is home to several principal organs of the UN, including the UN General Assembly, the UN Security Council, and the Economic and Social Council. Located on the banks of the East River, the UN headquarters is where diplomats from around the world come together to agree on resolutions and policies that shape UN efforts around peace and security, human rights, and sustainable development.
In New York, all of QUNO’s work aims to strengthen the ability of the UN to fulfil the vision of lasting peace laid out in the UN Charter. This overarching strategy is firmly rooted in the Quaker commitment to non-violence and the belief in the inherent worth and dignity of each human being. In this effort, QUNO works closely with UN diplomats, officials, and civil society partners, often using Quaker House to convene briefings and discussions, and build relationships and trust.
In keeping with Quaker practice, an essential aspect of QUNO’s approach involves uplifting the voices, concerns, and insights of those touched by violent conflict and injustice. We do this by working on various topics of concern at the UN in New York.
Geneva has long been a location for diplomacy and international relations and is currently home to many UN entities and processes and related organizations. This includes the UN Human Rights Council and Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Arms Trade Treaty Secretariat, the Secretariat of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the World Trade Organization, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the World Health Organization and many others.
QUNO’s work from the Geneva office is delivered through four interconnected programme areas with a collective vision of a UN system and community of nations that support and uphold the dignity of all, so that peace and justice can flourish and our shared home can be nurtured.
Across all programme areas we use our location and Quaker House to convene informal, off the record discussions as well as undertaking research and analysis and engaging in formal UN meetings and events. Whilst the institutions in Geneva remain a focus we also work in other locations and with other UN entities as processes as needed, most notably with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.