Today, the world faces an unprecedented challenge to achieving human rights and sustainable development for all. The COVID-19 pandemic, has exposed patterns of inequality and neglect representing gaps in states’ fulfilment of their existing human rights obligations but also challenges in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

This assessment is key to understanding the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis. It is a clear message that gaps in the fulfilment of human rights obligations can not only lessen society’s resilience in crisis situations but can also impair the ability of those furthest behind to claim and fulfil their rights. Depending on how states address this crisis, inequalities could become even more pronounced in the longer term.

Moving forward, and in order to ‘build back better’, we also need to ‘build back more equal’, and this means tackling inequality and discrimination as the very core of any recovery efforts, and striving to build back recognising equality as an enabler and an accelerator of progress. Human rights can guide these efforts.

This publication therefore aims to provide guidance to a broad range of sustainable development actors to:

• Understand the ways in which the 2030 Agenda is of relevance to issues of equality and non-discrimination, in particular in relation to the current global pandemic;
• Understand key human rights concepts related to equality and non-discrimination, how they should be used in practice, and how they apply to the COVID-19 recovery;
• Find key guidance documents and references from international human rights bodies on the cross-cutting principles of equality and non-discrimination, and how they apply to specific aspects of the SDGs.