the URG Team

On 9 and 10 June 2020, the Permanent Missions of Denmark and The Netherlands to the UN in Geneva, in cooperation with the Universal Rights Group (URG), convened a digital meeting of bilateral and multilateral development partners on how international cooperation could be better leveraged to support the national implementation of international human rights obligations and commitments, in particular in light of the COVID19 pandemic, and how human rights obligations and SDG commitments could be used as a blue print to ‘build back better’. This was the third informal meeting of the Oslo+ meeting proccess, following an inaugural meeting in Oslo, Norway, in April 2018, and a second meeting in Stockholm, in May 2019.

A key goal of the digital meeting, like the 2018 and 2019 meetings before it, 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, especially in light of post-COVID19 recovery and rebuilding programmes. This report is based on these exchanges and the ensuing discussions during the Oslo+digital 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.