Toward a More Peaceful and More Just World

In GrantStation's ongoing series looking at the UN's Sustainable Development Goals and what they mean for the nonprofit sector, we last discussed the core climate goals designed to mitigate global overheating. Those goals exemplify the difficulty of effecting change in a world where the power of extractive industries and political inertia are barriers to a sustainable future.

However, SDG 16 is just as daunting. That goal, composed of three subset aims, seeks to promote peaceful and inclusive societies, provide access to justice for all, and build effective, accountable, and inclusive institutions at all levels. In other words, the goal is peace, justice, and institutions.

Peace without and within

In the subcategory of peace, SDG 16 concerns itself with a reduction of conflict-related deaths. Considering current events, this needs to be discussed in detail. As recently as two years ago, war seemed like a secondary global problem, but in reality it was never less than humanity's most pressing issue. Many people have now been reminded how threatening war is and how it exerts a gravity that can pull countries and regions into its maw.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations' Global Conflict Tracker, there are currently 32 armed struggles ongoing in the form of full military engagements, ethnic combat, rebel insurgencies, and drug wars. Apart from Ukraine and Palestine, these are not largely covered by the media, but, alarmingly, twenty-three of the conflicts are raging in resource-rich Africa. Meanwhile, civil war in Myanmar is in its fifty-fifth year. Globally, an estimated 4.2 billion people live in conflict affected areas.

There are numerous nonprofits whose missions involve promoting peace; however, even purely humanitarian interventions can produce backlash that endangers funding. As it already stands, anti-war nonprofits' budgets and political access are dwarfed by the many entities invested in warfare. 2022 global military spending was an incredible $2.24 trillion, with the U.S. accounting for 39% of that total. According to the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, two thirds of conflicts (34 of 46 by its count) involve one or more parties armed by the United States. All of this is to highlight that any focus on global peace pits the UN against entrenched and powerful monetary interests in the world's most influential economy.

On average, countries that go to war lose 40% of their GDP. That would seem to be a major disincentive to conflict, but wars are fought for an array of reasons. While economic gain, particularly from the control or resources, tops the list, religion, nationalism, revolution, internal politics, and revenge are all part of the mix. War is each country's most forceful geopolitical tool, one that leaders are loathe to abandon. This is bad news for the future. According to many experts, because of climate change, countries may soon be going to war over water and food.

While SDG 16 specifically aspires to reduce conflict-related deaths, it's equally focused on peace within countries. One of the key aims is to reduce homicide rates, which reached 457,000 in 2021. Gun availability is a major cause, and laws around gun ownership vary by country. For example, there is currently only one store in the entirety of Mexico authorized to sell guns, yet gun crime is so serious as to be destabilizing. One of the UN's main goals is to curtail illicit gun commerce, which as an industry represents between 10% and 20% of the total global trade in guns. Other violence goals include reducing psychological and sexual violence, ending the exploitation and trafficking of children, and reducing the number of children exposed to physical aggression, particularly from caregivers.

Justice for all

The link between peace and the second focus of SDG 16—justice—is crystal clear. Only societies that are free from violence are able to strive toward accountability, transparency, and the rule of law. Like hundreds of nonprofits already working in this area, the UN hopes to tackle biases in criminal prosecutions, support the impartiality of courts and non-discriminatory laws, and address other incarceration issues distinct to individual countries. The 2021 global prison population was 11.2 million, with 3.4 million of that number unsentenced detainees, which indicates that obtaining swift trials is also a grave problem.

In addition, the UN places proportional representation in political bodies under the umbrella of justice. With the exception of Europe, people under age 45 suffer from an extreme lack of elected representation in their age group. The future cannot be equitable if the people who will actually live in it have little voice in what shape it takes. Measures have been introduced in Brazil, England, Australia, and other countries aimed at making it harder for people to vote. These usually have been cloaked in rhetoric about illegal voting, but the legislation also has been conceived in a way that would reduce the political power of minorities and youth.

Some of the measures proposed around the world haven't passed, but many have, particularly in the U.S., where election laws often fall under the control of individual states. This year alone, eleven states enacted voter restrictions. UN voting rights expert Fernand de Varennes criticized a recent Texas law, saying, “It is becoming unfortunately apparent that it is almost a tyranny of the majority where the minority right to vote is being denied in many areas.”

Institutions, accountability, and trust

Voting is generally thought of as an institution. The final part of the tripartite SDG 16 is the protection and bolstering of institutions. This is a wide-ranging focus aimed at institutions that provide information, those that register births and enable recognition of citizenship, and those in areas of government responsible for budgeting and revenue generation. Strengthening and reforming institutions is important for delivering services, but also for ensuring that people have the means to hold leaders to account, which helps to bolster trust in systems of government. It's understood within the framework of the goal that trust has waned and must be restored in order increase peace and stability.

Within this focus area, there's also the goal of increasing the participation of smaller and developing countries in the institutions of international governance. Bodies like the UN have been criticized for enforcing an outmoded balance of power, while legal organizations such as the International Criminal Court and the European Court of Human Rights are sometimes derided as weak because they're ignored whenever convenient by countries that end up on the losing side of rulings. Without more stringent enforcement of rules and a greater voice in such bodies for smaller countries, sustainability goals ranging from climate to trade will be more difficult to achieve.

A final piece of SDG 16's institutional focus is the protection of the press, specifically its freedom to operate and citizens' access to information. Distrust of media often prompts people to succumb to insiderism and a reliance upon outlets that proffer conspiratorial content. Once someone believes they're in possession of the singular truth, they are easily manipulated, led, and convinced to vote against their own interests.

However, it's also important that press organizations pursue their mandate diligently and transparently. Distrust of legacy media is largely a self-inflicted wound. It was slow to adjust to a digital landscape, misunderstood the public appetite for more granular and targeted news, and committed reporting lapses at important junctures. But most crucially, it allowed itself to become symbiotically ensnared with government, making it a conduit for narratives rather than a critic forensically examining the information it is given. Between 1973 and 1993, the only institution in the U.S. that lost more public trust than the press was Congress. This erosion occurred before the widespread uptake of the internet, and before the launch of Fox News.

All 17 of the Sustainable Development Goals are interlinked, as we've noted before, but without a properly functioning and trusted media each of the goals becomes less achievable. Dissecting narratives that pave the way for discrimination and war, examining legislation that impacts on basic rights, helping people to understand the reality and dangers of climate change, informing them about why stronger rights for women are characteristic of more prosperous societies, warning people that economic inequality is perilous to democracy, all require media that are trusted and that disseminate fact as fact, and opinion as opinion.

A difficult journey ahead

Peace, justice, and institutions. SDG 16 is a lot to absorb. Can nations be convinced to lay down arms? Can criminals high and low be brought to justice? Can enforcement of internal and international law be fair and authoritative? Can institutions deliver services fairly and information factually? In this moment of expanding conflict and declining trust, is eventually achieving the Sustainable Development Goals possible? None of the goals are easy. Each demands nothing less than a shift in human thought and action, which is something we in the nonprofit community have always understood quite well. Therefore, the answers are—and must always be—yes.