the URG Team

On 8-9 June 2022, the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (Peace and Human Rights Division, and Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation), with the support of the Universal Rights Group, convened a meeting of bilateral and multilateral development partners in Montreux, Switzerland, to consider the contribution of human rights and development cooperation to the prevention of crises and conflicts.

As with previous ‘Oslo+’ meetings, the gathering provided a space for bilateral and multilateral development agencies to share good practices for evolving ‘human rights-based approaches to development,’ while also adding a new dimension linked to international peace and security, namely:

How to mobilise bilateral ODA funds to drive progress with the national implementation of States’ international human rights obligations, and their Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) commitments, as a central contribution to building national ‘resilience’ and thus to preventing serious human rights crises and violent conflicts, including in fragile States.

To do so, the meeting considered the role of development actors in the realisation of human rights and the achievement of the SDGs’ central promise to ‘leave no one behind,’ as a critical contribution to the prevention of serious human rights violations, crises, and conflicts. It also looked at existing early warning/early response systems at international and regional levels.

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.