Letters - 3 July 2020
From United Nations Association-UK to Names and titles
UNA-UK
Our Local Meeting has been a subscribing member of the United Nations Association-UK (UNA-UK) for at least the last fifteen years, and, with changes in organisation involving a steep rise in the subscription, are taking the opportunity to review our future relationship. As a member of UNA-UK and a Quaker I have been asked by the Meeting to prepare some notes as we consider the situation. I am myself a keen supporter of UNA-UK and its role today. This includes both a leading role within the UN and also active engagement with the UK government’s role and policy toward and within the UN, with its increasingly vital but challenging role as the guardian and promoter of global multilateral cooperation in the crises of our time.
I believe that Quakers have had a close relationship with the UN and the UNA since their foundation and the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the end of the second world war; and that we share common aims and values of peace and peaceful means, equality, inclusion and human rights.
It would be most helpful if I could ask through your pages whether other Meetings or their members have also been members of UNA-UK, or in some way interested or representative for UNA-UK in their Meetings.
If so, I would be glad and grateful to hear their views and their Meeting’s connection with UNA-UK now and in the future, at the email address below.
Kit Welchman
kit4@totalise.co.uk
Good news from AVP
Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) Ireland (www.avpireland.ie) aims to help prisoners in Ireland to resolve differences in a nonviolent way and encourages peaceful living within the prison and in their lives thereafter. AVP, though non-sectarian, has Quaker DNA throughout – inspired by Quaker values and supported financially and through Quaker volunteers.
We were very pleased to learn from our main sponsor, the Irish Prison Service, that there has not been a single case of Covid-19 in the Irish prison population. This reflects well on the prison services and on the inmates themselves, who have made huge sacrifices to achieve this remarkable result.
We in AVP are now looking forward to gradually returning to the prisons in a safe way over the next few months. Please keep all in your thoughts.
Padraic Murray
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