Human rights and sustainable development

Following the first conference «Human rights and sustainable development» in 2021, AFD brought together a wide range of development stakeholders on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 25th anniversary of the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Defenders.

This second edition focused on how development actors can contribute concretely to the respect, protection and realization of human rights, while ensuring to move away from an overly anthropocentric approach, toward a more ecocentric one for the benefit of the living world as a whole.

Numerous speakers discussed their struggles for human rights. Whether they are from Africa, Latin America, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Western Europe… they are unanimous: no region in the world is spared human rights violations and everywhere, the space for civil society is shrinking, while populations express a strong demand for respect for individual rights and freedoms.

In this context, development actors support varied and original initiatives to jointly advance conventional human rights (recognized in an international treaty), the right to a healthy environment and emerging rights of nature.

All have shown that action is possible. The testimonies and concrete illustrations of the conference demonstrated this. The conference also promoted several calls to action, in particular by representatives of children and youth.