The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future.
At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.
The 2030 Agenda is explicitly grounded in human rights, and the SDGs seek to realise human rights for all. Moreover, the pledge to leave no one behind reflects the fundamental human rights principles of non-discrimination and equality. In fact, analysis has shown that more than 90 % of the SDGs targets are linked to international human rights and labour standards.
Implementing the SDGs therefore implicitly promotes human rights, and vice versa. They thus constitute two mutually reinforcing narratives, the SDGs being backed up by high-level political commitments, and human rights providing standards that in many cases are legally binding. The SDGs can in some ways be seen as a way of operationalising human rights commitments.
The tools and guidance materials we develop at Danish Institute for Human Rights (DIHR) can be used to operationalize this mutually reinforcing connection in implementation, monitoring and review.
Watch the video below to get an introduction to the linkage between SDG's and human rights and to some of DIHR's SDGs/Human Rights tools.
