Can SDG 16 Data Drive National Accountability? A Cautiously Optimistic View
| Published date | 01 January 2019 |
| Author | Nadia Touihri,Marie Laberge |
| Date | 01 January 2019 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12607 |
Can SDG 16 Data Drive National
Accountability? A Cautiously Optimistic View
Marie Laberge
Governance Measurement Expert
Nadia Touihri
National Statistical Institute of Tunisia
Abstract
Target 16.3 appears to provide a good example of ‘slippage in the level of ambition’in moving from visionary goals to
watered-down targets and indicators, due to the influence of powerful interests –in this case the UNODC. However, the SDG
Agenda offers an important corrective measure, by encouraging Member States to ‘domesticate’individual goals and targets –
adapting them to local circumstances. Tunisia provides a vivid illustration of how a national SDG16 monitoring system can
drive national accountability and contribute to positive change on the ground –provided indicators have broad-based buy-in
and resonate with local grievances and priorities. First, the conceptual scope of the Tunisian Governance Goal was greatly
expanded to include a strong focus on participation and human rights. Second the Tunisian SDG16 indicator set is dominated
by survey-based indicators thus placing people’s voice at the centre of the monitoring system. Third, the regular publication
of national SDG16 data in Tunisia has incentivized tangible responses from public officials. Several more examples of national
SDG16 consultative processes currently unfolding around the world are similarly showing that even while the politics of data
may be undemocratic at global level, they can be increasingly democratic at country level.
After initial euphoria around the historic adoption of a Glo-
bal Development Goal 16 dedicated to the promotion of
‘Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies’, the measurability of
such a dense amalgam of concepts, let alone the wisdom of
doing so, is regarded with mounting scepticism. Comment-
ing on the process of moving from visionary goals to
watered-down targets and indicators across the SDG
Agenda, Fukuda-Parr and McNeill deplore a ‘slippage in the
level of ambition’that can lead to the outright reinterpreta-
tion of the goals. In the case of Goal 16, Satterthwaite and
Dhital show how the Goal’s stated ambition to ‘provide
access to justice for all’, further reaffirmed in target 16.3,
was radically distorted by the selection of two criminal jus-
tice indicators –one on unsentenced detainees and another
on crime reporting. The authors correctly observe that this
exclusive focus on the criminal justice system is not only
out of sync with legal needs studies showing that a majority
of people’s legal issues are civil rather than criminal (World
Justice Project, 2018), but most importantly, fails to provide
an assessment of access to justice ‘from the people’s
perspective’.
A key conclusion of this special issue is that ‘governance
by numbers’is a manifestation of power. As seen in the
case of target 16.3 where the United Nations Office on
Drugs and Crime (UNODC), a powerful actor in the area of
criminal justice statistics, successfully lobbied to narrow the
scope of target 16.3 so as to retain only two ‘reliable and
feasible’indicators they were already tracking internation-
ally, ‘decisions to use certain indicators are often intended
to serve the purposes of powerful interests’(Fukuda-Parr,
2017, p. 6; Merry, 2011).
Yet all is not doomed. However real and detrimental
these power dynamics might have been at the global level
when SDG indicators were defined, the SDG Agenda offers
an important corrective measure against such distortions. By
encouraging Member States to ‘domesticate’individual
goals and targets and to conduct ‘regular and inclusive
reviews of progress at the national and sub-national levels
[...] drawing on contributions from indigenous peoples, civil
society, the private sector, national parliaments and other
stakeholders’(UN General Assembly, 2015), the Agenda
allows for power dynamics at country level to counterbal-
ance the shortcomings of global metrics. In the same way
the open and transparent Open Working Group process has
been lauded as ‘an important factor behind the SDGs’more
transformative and ambitious agenda’(Fukuda-Parr and
McNeill), an opportunity exists for similarly positive out-
comes to emerge from multi-stakeholder processes around
the contextualization of SDG 16 at national level.
It is these authors’belief, based on nearly a decade spent
working with national statisticians and other stakeholders
across all regions to produce nationally-relevant governance
Global Policy (2019) 10:Suppl.1 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12607 ©2019 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Global Policy Volume 10 . Supplement 1 . January 2019 153
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