Ylva Anna Maria Lindh was a Swedish Social Democratic politician and lawyer who served as Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1998 until her death. She was also a Member of the Riksdag for Södermanland County until her assassination. On 10 September 2003, four days before a referendum on replacing the Swedish krona with the euro as currency, Lindh was stabbed by Mijailo Mijailović at the NK department store in central Stockholm; she died the next morning at Karolinska University Hospital. Anna Lindh had been seen as a likely candidate to succeed Göran Persson as Social Democratic party leader. Her greatest commitment was to international cooperation and solidarity, as well as to environmental issues. She worked on these issues throughout her career, serving as Environment Minister from 1994 to 1998, and then as Foreign Minister for the last five years of her life.

The Swedish Social Democratic Party, formally the Swedish Social Democratic Workers' Party, usually referred to as The Social Democrats, is a centre-left social-democratic and democratic socialist political party in Sweden. Globally, it is a full member of the Progressive Alliance and the Party of European Socialists.