In 2015, the world committed itself to an ambitious fifteen year programme to eradicate poverty in all its forms and dimensions. In a crucial step forward, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) make an explicit commitment to protect human rights. The relationship between binding human rights and the SDG agenda, however, remains contentious and underdeveloped. How best human rights can be harnessed to achieve the SDGs and simultaneously, how the SDGs can be harnessed to advance the fulfilment of human rights?

The workshop is being organised by Professor Sandra Fredma (Oxford) and Dr Meghan Campbell (Birmingham) of the Oxford Human Rights Hub which is based at the Law Faculty at University of Oxford, UK and the British Academy. It will feed into the report Professor Fredman is writing for the British Academy on the relationship between human rights and the Sustainable Development Goals

The aim of this workshop is to bring together a variety of actors from governments, private sector, civil society and UN bodies to examine the ways in which human rights and development goals can work together to achieve the SDG agenda and particularly gender equality and women’s empowerment. It will focus on four inter-related themes:

• Women and Work
• Reproductive Health
• Violence Against Women
• International and Domestic Remedial Mechanisms

Cross cutting themes, including stereotyping of women, the role of resources and budgeting, intersectionality and class differences will be highlighted in each panel. It aims to be an informal but rigorous discussion of these crucial issues on the implementation of the SDGs.

This is a closed workshop. The reports from the workshop will be available at a later date.