Departing from the human rights city criteria established in the Swedish platform developed by the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions and the Raoul Wallenberg Institute, the city of Lund has begun to investigate and review Lund’s strategies, programs and plans. The aim is to establish a framework and action plan for the city’s work with human rights, which includes working more systematically and comprehensively with human rights, training in human rights of staff and it also includes the cooperation with other stakeholders, such as universities, research institutions, other municipalities, authorities, and importantly, with Lund’s citizens.

What has been done before?

One of the city’s goals is to create a sustainable and open society where all people can live and feel free to express themselves. For that purpose, Lund has been working since the 1990s with the rights of the child, so that children can grow up in a good city, where their rights are safeguarded and they are listened to. The City Council has decided that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), together with a regard to the consequences for children, should be applied and considered in all municipal decisions. They have put in place routines to take the perspectives of children when planning for roads, buildings, parks, water supply, sewage, waste management, culture, care for the elderly and infi rm, business development, and investments. The decision accompanies a milestone in the national context: the CRC is expected to be fully implemented in Swedish law in 2020. Link to the SDGs The initiatives carried out by the city of Lund could also be linked to the SDGs, showing the spill-over effect of a human rights-based approach into the sustainable goals. For instance, Lund’s projects would be benefi cial to SDGs 4 (education), 5 (gender), 8 (sustainable growth), 10 (inequality), and 16 (inclusion).

For further information, you can consult a paper, titled “Human Rights Cities and the SDGs”, published by the Raoul Wallenberg Institute on the link between human rights cities and SDG’s.