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Organization: United Nations Association of Sweden
The following information may be cited or quoted as long as the source is accurately mentioned and the words are not taken out of context.
Posted: May 05 2010,07:16 If you wrote this report, you will find a button here that you may click
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Postal address of organization/institution

Box 15115
SE-104 65  Stockholm
Sweden

E-mail address of organization/institution

jens.petersson@fn.se

Website address of organization/institution

http://www.fn.se

Telephone of organization/institution

+46-8-462 25 40

PRIORITIES: All of the organization's domains of culture of peace activity

EDUCATION FOR PEACE
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
HUMAN RIGHTS
WOMEN'S EQUALITY
DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION
UNDERSTANDING, TOLERANCE AND SOLIDARITY
FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION
INTERNATIONAL PEACE AND SECURITY

TOP PRIORITY: The organization's most important culture of peace activity

INTERNATIONAL PEACE AND SECURITY

PARTNERSHIPS AND NETWORKS: What partnerships and networks does your organization participate in, thus strengthening the global movement for a culture of peace?

The United Nations Association of Sweden is in itself partly an umbrella organisation which gather other national NGO's interested in UN-related topics.

We do network specifically with various NGO's (both those already members of the UNA themselves and non-members).

In the suggested fields we do coordinate work between organisations promoting human rights ("MR-nätverket"). We are also networking with NGO's in order to ban mines and cluster munitions. We have a partnership with others on nuclear disarmament. We have during the decaded also participated in a joint project on peace and nonviolence education (project "Fred i Våra Händer") and several other joint projects, networks, partnerships and cooperations, both with NGO's and other parts of the society.

ACTIONS: What activities have been undertaken by your organization to promote a culture of peace and nonviolence during the ten years of the Decade? If you already made a report in 2005, your information from 2005 will be included in the 2010 report.

For a national organisation with Swedish as our working language it is not possible to too much time presenting a full picture of our work to an international audience.

For the Swedish reading audience our activities are very well described in our annual reports which for the decade in question are available at the internet here:
http://www.fn.se/var-verksamhet/verksamhetsberattelser/

Having said this we present the following summary in English as an example of our work:

UNA-Sweden is an umbrella organization supported in around 100 national civil society organizations. It also enjoys the support of 7,000 individual members organized in 120 local chapters.

Our work follow the three main thematic pillars of the UN-system: Peace, Development and Human rights.


Peace

UNA Sweden has worked on peace, security and disarmament issues in various ways over several decades. During the 80s and the last years of the Cold War it arranged the Peoples Parliament for Disarmament, during which civil society representatives gathered to discuss disarmament issues. More recently it coordinated Swedish NGO activities in favour of the establishment of the International Criminal Court.

UNA Sweden is an organization which both debates and informs on UN affairs. In this capacity we often receive and try to answer questions from students on why the UN failed to stop the genocide in Rwanda and the ongoing mass atrocities in Darfur. We find such failures of the international community to be a threat, not only to future victims of such situations, but to the UN in itself. It is imperative that the world community learns from these mistakes and prevents their future repetition.

To work in this direction UNA Sweden is an active supporter of the concept Responsibility to Protect ("R2P") created by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, ICISS, in 2001. We are pleased that the UN adopted, unanimously, this concept at the 2005 World Summit. We believe, however, that some of the ideas of the ICISS report need further discussion and support. For this purpose UNA Sweden arranges seminars, debates and study groups. Recent speakers at such events include the UNSG special advisor on Genocide, Francis Deng, and the UNSG special advisor on R2P, Edward Luck. We have also initiated cooperation on R2P issues with fellow UNAs.

Another issue in the field of peace and disarmament that UNA Sweden works with is nuclear disarmament. The international Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction led by Dr. Hans Blix (WFUNA president 2006-2009) presented its final report "Weapons of terror". One of the recommendations in the report was that tactical nuclear weapons should be withdrawn to the five official nuclear weapons states. UNA Sweden supports this idea, as well as the other recommendations made by the Commission, and arranges activities in line with this view.

We also raise funds to UN-led work. One example in the area of peace is Adopt-a-Minefield which aims to increase public awareness against the use of landmines and to raise money for UN mine clearance work. The Swedish branch of the campaign focuses on mine action in Cambodia and Ethiopia.

 
Human rights

In the field of human rights, UNA Sweden is the coordinator for the National Human Rights Network consisting of 60 Swedish NGOs. The network is divided into several working groups that focus on specific thematic issues. We have a working group that follows the work of the Human Rights Council by attending sessions, producing articles, arranging conferences and in other ways getting the discussions on the Council to the public debate. UNA Sweden has written a shadow report to the CERD committee twice during the decade (in 2004 and 2008) and has also been involved in writing the shadow report to the CEDAW committee.


Development

The Millennium Declaration and the MDGs have been central to the work of UNA-Sweden for many years. Extensive activities are carried out in order to increase the awareness of the importance of the MDGs and to influence government policies in this area.

Here too we do some concrete work to support the work of the UN while fostering future generations into reflecting upon the living conditions in other countries. This work is carried out in cooperation with the WFP School Feeding Programme. The idea is to offer poor children free lunch at school, something which has several positive effects for the children themselves as well as for their families, communities and countries. The Swedish school feeding campaign cooperates with well-known Swedish restaurants and the coffee shop Barista Fair Trade Coffee. Both campaigns have enrolled famous Swedish entertainers, media representatives and sport stars as ambassadors.

PROGRESS: Has your organization seen progress toward a culture of peace and nonviolence in your domain of action and in your constituency during the second half of the Decade?

Generally speaking we would find it hard to analyse the suggested progress (or lack there of) in question in an objective way.

The theme and topic covering "a culture of peace and nonviolence" is huge. Measuring progress in this area in a serious way would have needed much work on establishing base line facts and figures, then setting indicators and now reviewing the development.

OBSTACLES: Has your organization faced any obstacles to implementing the culture of peace and nonviolence? If so, what were they?

A major obstacle is simply that we haven't succeeded in changing some things that are very wrong with the world.
Let's face it: The World at the end of the decade of peace and nonviolence annually spends 1 400 billion dollars in global military expenditure instead of the "only" 900 billion dollars we spent annually at the start of the decade.

Another obstacle, at a different level, could be what we put into concepts such as peace and nonviolence. We would argue that sometimes some violence is indeed needed to bring some peace, a fact which many may see as a contradiction in itself.

PLANS: What new engagements are planned by your organization in the short, medium and long term to promote a culture of peace and nonviolence?


GLOBAL MOVEMENT: How do you think the culture of peace and nonviolence could be strengthened and supported at the world level??

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Organization: United Nations Association of Sweden

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