Right Agenda Accelerator

Important results from the project

Can university students and the world’s human rights defenders work together to protect and promote human rights? To find an answer, Civil Rights Defenders teamed up with Linköping University and started Right Agenda Accelerator – Sweden’s first accelerator programme for human rights. Together with needs owners, advisors and partners, the project has developed a process for social innovation building on the strengths of the respective party. Throughout the project, tools and processes have been developed to ensure a human rights perspective on the idea development process.

Expected long term effects

The ideas and processes developed during the project have strengthened the understanding of human rights and human rights defenders’ reality, while also supporting idea development contributing to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Human rights defenders have developed a deeper understanding of the innovation process and accessed valuable contacts. The project has also created a space for sustainable development with unique and redesigned processes for support to future innovators becoming change agents.

Approach and implementation

The process has during three rounds supported students, tasked with contemporary challenges, with developing innovation concepts. Human rights defenders and change actors have contributed with needs that forward-thinking innovators analyse to create sustainable solutions. Continuous support has been given by various experts from Civil Rights Defenders. Learnings from one round was used to further develop the next – a positive development mirrored by the response from participating students and in the number of applicants for each round.