(originally shared on 10/24/21)

How are UUs interconnected with the United Nations? The UUA has had an office at the UN for 60 years and each fall that connection brings UN issues to UU congregations across the globe. Climate change is not currently recognized by the United Nations as a cause for someone to qualify as a refugee, so legal protections are needed on an international level to affirm the rights of these millions on the move. What opportunities are there in our Spokane area to help respond to Climate-forced displacement refugees? The theme of last year’s UN Sunday was All in for Climate Justice: Food Equity and Justice. We will replay our moving service from 10/24/21, lay led by Sara Bauer and Joyce Robinson, and with guest speaker Bruce Knotts, recently retired Director of the UUA office at the UN. We’ll follow this with a conversation led by Kathryn Alexander about the 2022-23 UN Sunday theme, All in for Climate Justice: Displacement and Human Rights  and local opportunities to work on these issues. Now is the time to prepare to protect ourselves and the people of our local and world community, from climate-forced displacement. Please join us for this discussion!

Bruce Knotts, the recently retired director of the UUA office at the UN. Bruce began directing the Unitarian Universalist Association Office at the United Nations (UU@UN) in 2008 after decades of diplomacy and foreign service. At UU@UN, He founded faith-based advocacy for sexual orientation/gender identity human rights at the UN and continues to advocate for the rights of women and indigenous peoples and for sustainable development in moral terms of faith and values. Bruce is co-chair of the NGO Committee on Human Rights at the UN, the chair of the NGO Committee on Disarmament, Peace and Security, and a member of the NGO Working Group on the UN Security Council. In 2006, Bruce married Isaac Humphrie in Vancouver, British Columbia.