The Sustainable Development Goal 16 aims to “promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive societies for sustainable development” (Sustainable Development). This goal targets a lot of different themes and relates them to sustainable development. The complexity of this goal is that it is trying to tackle important themes all within the same sphere. For the purpose of this blog, there would a focus on the security and peace implications all the above listed themes provide, and vice versa.
In the past few decades security threats, particularly with regards to terrorism has been the key to the hindered growth of the developing world. I will take the case for Pakistan as a prime example for this blog post. Security threats, whether they are sectarian or terrorist have undermined Pakistan’s ability to grow at the rate it has potential for. Additionally, poor institutions and governance levels lead to corruption, which in effect manage to undermine the society’s ability to prosper as corrupt politicians and civil service do not provide the services they are hired for. This leads to the question of accountability, which usually is push back and forth between different institutions and levels in a hierarchy. In the case of many developing nations it can be seen that power resides in the hands of a few, who are for the sake of maintaining power will not let institutional reforms take place. This prevents their power from being questioned and undermined. Therefore, it can be said that for the SDG 16, the key challenge is to break the current norm and structure in many societies so that they may become cohesive and effective, particularly with regards to the judicial system. It is noted, “progress with respect to the rule of law and access to justice is mixed” (Sustainable Development). This indicates that more focus needs to be placed on actively working on respecting and implementing the rule of law.
Having analyzed the different elements of SDG16 it can be said that the goal is trying to accommodate a range of different issues into one. By doing so, the challenge is of effectively working on every aspect. The UN needs to make sure that they can effectively assess the success of the signatories of the SDG.