Civil society and sport

The Government will today approve a new five-year aid strategy for Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous country. The previous strategy dates from 2003 and there was a major need for a relaunch.

Åsa Regnér, Minister for Children, the Elderly and Gender Equality, and Ivailo Kalfin, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Labour and Social Policy, today signed a cooperation agreement between Sweden and Bulgaria. The agreement, which covers issues dealing with gender equality, children, the elderly and people with disabilities, aims to improve the situation of vulnerable EU citizens.

Meeting of the Small Group of the Global Coalition against Daesh, Rome, 2 February 2016. Check against delivery.

Opinion piece by Minister for Foreign Affairs Margot Wallström in Svenska Dagbladet on 2 December 2015.

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This week, Minister for Foreign Affairs Margot Wallström visited Ukraine with Lithuania’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Linas Linkevičius for a busy three-day programme.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Margot Wallström and Lithuania’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Linas Linkevičius will visit Ukraine on 17–18 November. The joint visit demonstrates Sweden’s and Lithuania’s support to Ukraine, both politically and of its reforms.

How will countries affected by conflict be able to implement the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? This is one of the items on the agenda as the International Dialogue for Peacebuilding and Statebuilding met in Paris 4 November, under the leadership of Minister for International Development Cooperation Isabella Lövin.

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Today we celebrate United Nations Day. And we are doing so in a world that is more uncertain than for many years and in which the United Nations is needed more than ever. Global crises and challenges require common solutions.

World leaders are meeting in New York today to adopt 17 global Sustainable Development Goals, which are to be achieved by 2030.

The Government proposes giving continued support for security-enhancing measures among religious communities through the Swedish Commission for Government Support to Faith Communities. SEK 7 million will be allocated.

On 9 September Åsa Regnér, Minister for Children, the Elderly and Gender Equality met with Bulgarian Minister Ivailo Kalfin, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Labour and Social Policy to discuss the possibilities to strengthen the bilateral cooperation on social issues related to vulnerable citizens.

Swedish Daily Göteborgs Posten 3 September 2015 A number of reforms are now being launched to strengthen the UN. One of these is to provide support to a dozen or so UN bodies that work with everything from providing help to people in need and strengthening children’s and women’s rights to countering the effects of natural disasters, writes Minister for International Development Cooperation Isabella Lövin.

Today the Swedish Government decided on core support for fifteen UN bodies, active in fields including assistance to people in distress, promotion of women’s rights and reducing child mortality worldwide.

Svenska Dagbladet July 2 2015 Today, here in Almedalen, the Government has decided to step up cooperation with civil society in Sweden to reduce poverty and oppression in the world. Together, the Government and civil society organisations have drawn up joint commitments to enhance dialogue and collaboration in the area of development cooperation. Meanwhile, as these are being adopted, we witness country after country reducing the scope for independent organisations, human rights defenders and journalists. The Government will fight this trend and work to ensure that civil society organisations everywhere – not just in Sweden – are able to work freely.

In late February, Minister for Strategic Development and Nordic Cooperation Kristina Persson appointed three working groups that make up the core of the Government’s work on issues of future importance. In mid-April, the working group participants met with the Minister for Strategic Development, with the aim of drawing up guidelines for their future work, and sharing their experiences and ideas.

The analysis group ‘The green transition’ will set out from the visions of a fossil-free vehicle fleet by 2030 and a carbon neutral Sweden in 2050, and will describe the political and market changes needed to realise these goals. This is one of three analysis groups within the framework of the Government’s future-oriented project ‘Mission: The Future’, led by Kristina Persson, Minister for Strategic Development and Nordic Cooperation.

‘The future of work’. This is the name of one of the three thematic areas that the Government’s new Secretariat for Startegic Development for the Future will work with. The Government’s objectives of high employment and low unemployment will be the focus of an analysis group by the same name, led by Annelie Nordström, Chair of the Swedish Municipal Workers’ Union (Kommunal), and Klas Eklund, economist and writer with previous experience of political assignments in the Government Offices.