OHCHR and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

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OHCHR and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

“

We need to dismantle the architecture of inequalities, and rebuild our economies with an architecture that enhances human rights – and therefore facilitates trust in government; sustainable development; and peace.

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UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk at a 2023 workshop on promoting and protecting economic, social, and cultural rights

About the Surge Initiative and Human Rights

OHCHR established the Surge Initiative in late 2019 to respond to galloping inequalities, the slow-paced implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and growing social unrest. The aim of the initiative was to step up country- and regional-level engagement on economic, social and cultural rights (ESCRs), the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and prevention and strengthen the link between human rights and economics. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, within months of the launch of the Surge Initiative, lent a compelling urgency to achieving its objectives.

By bringing together economists, development, and ESCR experts, the Surge Initiative:

  • Provides specialized advice and analysis to operationalize ESCR, as relevant to furthering the goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and curbing economic and other inequalities, including through macroeconomic policies anchored in human rights norms and standards;
  • Seeds change for a human rights economy, by applying a human rights-based approach to macroeconomics and advising on medium- to long-term human rights economic policies to ensure compliance with Member States' ESCR obligations, including by undertaking human rights-based budget analysis to expand fiscal space for social spending;
  • Maximizes the findings and recommendations of the UN human rights mechanisms by translating these into strategic operational options to inform country development policies, plans and programmes to advance the realization of ESCR and implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, leaving no one behind;
  • Contributes to the 2030 Agenda LNOB pledge by prioritizing engagement that aims to curb economic and other inequalities, including through addressing data and budgetary gaps and analysis; and
  • Engages with the new generation of United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Frameworks and Common Country Analyses to implement the vision of the UN Secretary General’s Call to Action for Human Rights that compels the UN system to seize the generational opportunity to build a more equitable world.

This is done through collaborating with and providing support to OHCHR in-country and regional presences, UN Resident Coordinators (RC) and RC economists, UN Country Teams, state authorities, civil society organizations, national human rights institutions, rights-holders, academia, and other key stakeholders including, for example, international financial institutions. 

One of the principal avenues for such engagement is through the provision of financial and technical support to in-country and regional through seeding-change projects. These projects are aimed at supporting system-wide efforts to place human rights at the centre of socio-economic recovery and building-back better, including by advocating for economic policy shifts that counter rising inequalities, putting a spotlight on disadvantaged groups and advancing investment in ESCR. Since 2019, the Surge Initiative has provided support to 63 of these projects globally.

The Surge Initiative is funded from OHCHR’s core budget as well as bilateral donors including Bahrain, China, Ireland and Switzerland. 

Since July 2021, the Surge Initiative has entered into a partnership with the Raoul Wallenberg Institute (RWI). RWI supports the Surge Initiative to combat inequalities in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, by expanding partnerships, outreach and visibility of the Surge Initiative's work. Furthermore, in a critical development for OHCHR's efforts at pioneering the conceptual and operational underpinnings of a human rights economy, OHCHR signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the New School's Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy​. This partnership represents a unique initiative aimed at developing scholarship and economic policy-making, and to develop programs with a diverse array of stakeholders in support of evidence-based policy solutions to reduce inequalities and poverty towards achieving human rights for all without discrimination.

​Through its quarterly newsletters, the Surge Team seeks to share, on a quarterly basis, some highlights about its work, as well as future engagements and interesting tools and resources related to the Surge Team's work. Click here​ to sign up to receive the quarterly newsletter.

Examples of Surge Initiative country engagements are showcased in this 2021 ECOSOC report.

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