The URG Team

On 10 May 2019, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Sweden and the Swedish Agency for International Development Cooperation (Sida), in cooperation with the Universal Rights Group (URG), convened a meeting of bilateral and multilateral development partners in Stockholm on how international cooperation could be better leveraged to support the national implementation of international human rights obligations and commitments. This was the second informal meeting on the subject, following an inaugural meeting in Oslo, Norway, in April 2018.

The gathering provided an opportunity to reflect on important new developments since the first meeting in Oslo. In particular, it provided a space for development partners to share information on new policies and practices designed to better leverage official development assistance (ODA) and wider international cooperation to help States implement their international human rights obligations and commitments. Participants also discussed how improved human rights implementation contributes to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) ‘leaving no one behind,’ how implementation contributes to the UN Secretary-General’s ‘prevention agenda,’ and how stakeholders might work together to better measure (empirically) human rights change and impact.

A key goal of the Stockholm meeting, like the 2018 Oslo meeting, was to provide a space for development partners to share information and experiences as to how international efforts to better support human rights implementation is informing the development of new rights-based approaches to international development cooperation. This report is based on these exchanges and the ensuing discussions during the Oslo+1 meeting.

In order to respect the ‘Chatham House rule’ under which the meeting was held, the report does not attribute comments made or conclusions reached to any of the individual participants or their respective organisations.