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QUNO Geneva leads on human rights and conventional arms discussion for the Geneva Consultations on the New Agenda for Peace

3rd April 2023

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QUNO Geneva, as a founding member of the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform (GPP), supported  consultations with relevant stakeholders in Geneva on the New Agenda for Peace Process (NA4P), which was organized in partnership with the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs on March 16th and 17th.

The NA4P is a follow-up to the UN Secretary General Our Common Agenda report to address the contemporary challenges faced by the international community and will be presented at the Summit for the Future in September 2024.

The Geneva consultations are part of a broader set of inputs to the NA4P’s development, bringing together actors from international Geneva to gather perspectives, inspiration, and recommendations. The sessions were based on one of the NA4P’s priorities areas, namely, to reinvigorate prevention efforts and focused on mediation; climate, peace, and security efforts; a revitalized approach to good governance; financing; human rights and the regulation of conventional weapons.

QUNO led the session on strengthening prevention through human rights. The discussion was aimed at ensuring that human rights actors and human rights-based approaches were considered in the NA4P. This continues to be a part of our ongoing work to highlight and strengthen the crucial relationship that exists between human rights and sustaining peace.

QUNO also supported the session on strengthening prevention through the regulation of conventional weapons, which was led by Small Arms Survey and Control Weapons. Considering the absence of conventional weapons in the outline of the New Agenda, and our own concern over the impacts of such weapons on human rights and social justice – it was critical for QUNO for this topic to feature.

For further details on the outcomes of those two sessions, please see below draft outcome reports.

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The key takeaways from the discussions will be developed into a broader consultation report by the GPP that will be made public in due course and will be shared with stakeholders working on the NA4P process in New York with the aim of feeding into the overall process with the NA4P to be published in June 2023.

QUNO in Geneva and New York will continue to support this process in the hopes of creating more just peaceful and inclusive societies. For more on our engagement to date:

Areas of work: Sustaining Peace

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