Building on the high emphasis of climate change on the High Commissioner's opening address to the 48th Human Rights Council (HRC) session, QUNO Geneva addressed the HRC under Item 9, addressing racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related forms of intolerance; and follow-up to and implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action.

Friday marked the close of the 54th Session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and 14th Session of the Working Group 1 , during which State delegates considered contributions to the IPCC’s 6th Assessment Report (AR6).  QUNO, for FWCC, is one of the most active observers at IPCC Plenary meetings.  QUNO’s Representative for Human Impacts of Climate Change, Lindsey Fielder Cook, was in attendance throughout  the two-week virtual meetings.

Efforts to establish a universal human right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment continue at the Human Rights Council. 

On 10th March, at the 46th Session of the Human Rights Council, QUNO's Human Impacts of Climate Change programme endorsed a joint statement by the Right to a Healthy Environment Campaign, under the General Debate on Item 3, calling for the Council to adopt the universal right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment.

Our new, March 2021 edition of the QUNO Review is now available online. The annual review provides a brief introduction to QUNO and our way of working, as well as an overview of each of our programme areas. Learn more about our past year of our work and see where we are headed in 2021.

QUNO is proud to be one of the institutional partners behind the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform, the organisation that runs Geneva Peace Week – a leading international peacebuilding forum. This year’s Geneva Peace Week was delivered in a fully online format and featured three events co-organised by QUNO.

QUNO delivered an oral statement at the 43rd session of the UN's Human Rights Council (HRC), recognizing the work of the UN's Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment showing how human rights are seriously affected by a degraded environment. QUNO's statement, delivered by Programme Assistant Detmer Yens Kremer, encouraged the HRC to make "an historic contribution by adopting a resolution recognizing the right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment," and also emphasized that the time for action is now.