HRC61 - EU General Comment - Item 3/ L.28
HRC61 – item 3
L.28 – Promotion and protection of human rights and the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
EU General Comment
31st March 2026
Mr. President,
I speak on behalf of the EU Member States who are members of the Council. This statement has been agreed by the EU as a whole.
We thank the Core Group for the presentation of the resolution L.28 “Promotion and protection of human rights and the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”.
With only 4 years until 2030, this resolution comes at an important moment where we need to collectively accelerate progress to achieve the 2030 Agenda and to implement the SDGs. We recall in this regard that the promotion and protection of human rights and the implementation of the 2030 Agenda are interrelated and mutually reinforcing. The European Union and its member States consider the 2030 Agenda as our shared compass for sustainable development and a better world, especially crucial in this time characterised by multiple crises and conflicts threatening development gains and human rights globally.
As the world’s largest development assistance donor, the EU and its Member States promote a human rights-based approach to inclusive and sustainable development. We particularly welcome in this regard the request to the OHCHR to continue to provide technical assistance and capacity-building for States to implement approaches that integrate the promotion and protection of human rights and the realization of the 2030 Agenda, taking into account a gender-responsive approach.
We thank the core-group for including all three dimensions of sustainable development- economic, social and environmental – in a balanced and integrated manner. We thank them in particular for recalling the Summit of the Future as well as its outcome documents, the Sevilla Conference, the Doha Summit and the States obligations and commitments under multilateral environmental instruments and agreements. The EU is committed to remaining a reliable partner in international development, ensuring that no one is left behind and shaping a fairer, more inclusive global financial system. In this context, we underline that any discussions on the reform of the international financial architecture and broader development efforts should remain guided by the central role of universal human rights of all individuals.
In the UN80 context and the current liquidity crisis, we are particularly grateful to the core-group for its efforts on rationalization by reducing the number of intersessional meetings from 3 to 2 as well as reducing the reporting.
For these reasons, the EU expresses its support for draft resolution L.28 as orally revised and we call on the Council to adopt it by consensus.
Thank you, Mr. President.