Lund

Lund a Human Rights City

In August 2018, Lund's Municipality appointed Lund as a Human Rights City. This made Lund the first Human Rights City in both Sweden and in Scandinavia. The decision was preceded by work in cooperation with the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights (RWI), in Lund. Together, the city and RWI investigated the prerequisites for Lund to work systematically on human rights, with the intention of becoming a Human Rights City. 

The city council members made the decision to designate Lund a Human Rights City since they were convinced that social issues such as inclusion, social sustainability, gender equality, accessibility, good governance and the delivery of public services are best handled at the local level rather than at the regional, national or international levels.

Programme for Social Sustainability

We have been busy during our first years as a Human Rights City. In cooperation with civil society organisations, Lund's University, the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and the city's internal administrations and departments, we have carried out analyses and investigations about the current situation in Lund concerning human rights and public health. The aim was to find a starting point to begin our work as a Human Rights City. 

Based on the analyses and investigations, we have created a policy that describes Lund's approach to the UN's Sustainable Goals and a programme, Lund's Programme for Social Sustainability. The programme details the city's work with human rights and public health and focuses on the most urgent social needs in Lund as a starting point for the Human Rights City. The programme is ten years in length but will be subject to revision twice depending on what needs arise. 

The areas we are going to focus on are as follows:

• Democracy: creating equal possibilities for participation and influence.

• Education: creating equal opportunities for lifetime education.

• Healthy Habits: creating healthy habits throughout life.

• Work and Employment: better access to the labour market for everybody.

• Housing and the Ambient Environment: all areas of the city should be developed.

• Equality: women, men and non-binary individuals should have equal opportunities to shape society and their lives. 

We have also created a follow-up structure and release a sustainability report annually. In the report, we follow up and evaluate the main-goal areas in the sub-targets in the sustainability report. After analysing the report's results, we adjust and re-prioritise our actions and activities if it is needed. 

Lund's ambitions for our continued work with human rights

Through the programme for sustainability, we have built up a structure for our work with human rights and public health with main goals, sub-targets and a follow-up structure as a base, we will be able to implement and follow up the work with human rights and public health more efficiently. 

Our focus for the next year is to continue working with the implementation of the method of gender mainstreaming to promote gender equality in Lund, as well as implement a method for a human rights-based approach. In short, a human rights-based approach means that the city's departments and units, particularly those who work closely with citizens, such as social service units or leisure time clubs for youths, map their processes and use human rights as a framework in their work with clients. By mapping processes based on human rights, the purpose of working with a human rights-based approach is to prevent discrimination against groups and individuals and secure that citizens can claim their human rights.