UU-UNO Pursues Historic Opportunity
With the integration of the UU-UNO and the UUA, the UUA would gain the ability to advocate UU values in the UN arena, while for the UU-UNO integration would mean financial stability and greater institutional capacity.
I am happy to tell you that at our January 15 meeting in Tulsa our Board voted unanimously to endorse such a goal and to proceed expeditiously toward integrating the two organizations. If approved by our membership at the April 30 Annual Meeting, the UU-UNO will become a department of the UUA’s International Staff Group, effective July 1.
With the support of the UUA International Resources Office, we believe that the UU-UNO can one day represent U/U’s world-wide at the UN. In recognition of the UU-UNO’s long-standing relationship with the Canadian Unitarian Council in representing Canadian Unitarians at the United Nations, it is intended to negotiate closer links among the three organizations involved-UUA, CUC, and UU-UNO. If successful, this new partnership with Canada will serve as a model for further international cooperation.
We anticipate that the UU-UNO will keep its current relationships with envoys, member congregations, individuals, donors and funders, even though it will no longer be a separate entity. As part of the UUA, we will be able to advocate ever more strongly for UU values at the UN.
For more information, please contact Bruce Knotts, Executive Director, UU-UNO, bknotts@uu-uno.org, or Catherine Onyemelukwe, Board President, conyemelukwe@gmail.com. To see the UUA announcement regarding the UU-UNO – UUA integration, please see: http://www.uua.org/news/newssubmissions/175115.shtml
Catherine Onyemelukwe, CFRE
President of the Board, UU-UNO
I am so heartened by and proud of this now official news of the return of our UU-UNO into the wider UUA framework. Bravo especially to our Board, to the UUA International Resources Office, and to the CUC for seeing and trusting the wisdom and promise of this reconnection!
Peace to all, Peggy Montgomery
UU-UNO Advisor & Past-President
Dear Friends,
I’m all for greater financial stability at the UU-UNO. But the UUA is basically a US national organization serving the US national UU community, and it is not clear to me how the international character of the UU-UNO will be maintained within the UUA framework.
There are 20 national UU groups around the world! Will their members now have to join the UUA in order to join the UU-UNO?
Will membership in the UUA now count as membership in the UU-UNO?
Will membership in the UU0UNO now count as membershipo in the UUA?
And whatever has happened to efforts that I tried to initiate two or three years ago to broaden the UU-UNO’s non-English language capacity? Are we still monolingual in the English languag?
As I have written elsewhere, what we really need is a strengthened and well funded international organization–a UU Global Ministry for Earth, Peace, and Justice–that will galvanize and revitalize ICUU activities around the world and give them a definite thematic emphasis and direction. The UU-UNO would make a natural part of this Global Ministry.
Merger with the UUA may help our finances, but it also seems to suboirdinate the worldwide U/U movement to the United States, and I’m not happy with that.