Peace & Disarmament
Geneva
QUNO’s programme on Peace and Disarmament aims to reduce the threat or incidence of armed violence and build the conditions for sustainable peace. It aims to enhance inter-actor dialogue and cooperation within UN international settings and between Geneva and regional, national, and local levels of action.
QUNO’s Peace & Disarmament work takes place primarily in QUNO Geneva, with links to QUNO Peacebuilding programme, in New York.
Current work
In recent years, there has been growing understanding of the relationship between processes of arms control and disarmament and other approaches to achieving sustainable peace. Throughout its history, QUNO has made this relationship central to its work.
QUNO is also engaged in both New York and Geneva with the main UN disarmament mechanisms. These include the First Committee of the UN General Assembly (New York), the Conference on Disarmament (Geneva), processes dealing with biological weapons, nuclear non-proliferation and conventional weapons. QUNO also facilitates NGO engagement with the multilateral system and is a founding member of the NGO Committee for Disarmament (Geneva).
QUNO’s D&P programme carries out much of its work through three partnerships that it contributed to creating:
Past work
In the past, QUNO engagement has included a central role in establishing a place for non-governmental organisations at the First Special Session of the General Assembly on Disarmament in 1978, behind-the-scenes engagement with the negotiation of the Chemical Weapons Convention in the early 1990s, and engagement at an early stage with the negotiation of the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention in late 1990s, and an active role on issues relating to Small Arms and Light Weapons.
News
Former QUNO Director David Atwood, who retired in 2011, presented the Backhouse Lecture at Australia Yearly Meeting. We are grateful to Australian Quakers for making available the book published to accompany his lecture. This describes his work seeking disarmament and peace at the UN over many years. To read the book, please click here.
QUNO Geneva played a key role in the preparation of the 2nd Ministerial
Review Conference of the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and
Development on October 31st-November 1st, by facilitating involvement of
civil society. QUNO facilitated involvement of over 70 NGOs, most from
the Global South, in this Ministerial Conference, part of a process that
initially involved no civil society representatives.
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