Olof Palme International Center 2020-2025

The Olof Palme International Center (OPC) is the umbrella organisation for the Swedish Labour movement's international development cooperation and advocacy activities. With OPC's 27 member organisations (MOs) it co-operates with people and organisations throughout the World, with the purpose to achieve progressive development for democracy, equality and sustainability. Sida has a longstanding cooperation with OPC. In October 2019 OPC submitted a proposal to Sida under the Strategy for Support via Swedish Civil Society organisations for the period 2020-2024, and the Strategy for Sweden's for development cooperation with Myanmar 2018-2022. The overall objective of OPC's proposal is to "achieve progressive development for democracy, equality and sustainability." The proposal includes nine programmes. The number of local partners organisations is approximately 120. The grand total budget for the five-year period is 613 MSEK (including own contribution), of which 486 MSEK is applied from the CSO Strategy, and 82 MSEK is applied from the Myanmar Strategy. By the following five political priorities the OPC and its partners contribute to poverty reduction; - Countering the threats to democracy and human rights - Advancing equality and worker’s rights – building new alliances and pushing progressive politics - Sustainability through a just transition – countering climate change - Promoting peace and dialogue – mitigating armed conflict and social tensions - Opposing the backlash – increasing gender equality The applied budget from the CSO-strategy is an increase by 21%, compared to the last funding period 2016-2019. The reasons for the increase are: expanded operations in most regions, increased local presence in several regions, shift from project-based focus to supporting organisations, including core support, much more labour intense application of RBM due to the shift to adaptive management. Sida assess the proposal to be relevant to the CSO-strategy and the Myanmar Strategy. The proposed changes in the operations are assessed to be positive by Sida. Sida proposes that the OPC is granted to 458 000 000 SEK for the implementation of the programme for the period of 2020-2024. Of these funds, a total of 60 000 000 SEK is allocated for operations in Myanmar for the period 2020-2024.