Thinking and working politically: A way forward on SDG 16, by Debra Ladner

SDG 16 recognizes that peace, justice and accountable institutions are critical to sustainable, transformative and inclusive development.It sets out ambitious targets on a range of issues from reducing violence and corruption, to combatting trafficking and organized crime, to ensuring legal identity for all.  In doing so, SDG 16 provides a long-awaited and powerful mandate for donors and implementing organizations to develop a coherent focus on these critically important issues. By placing governance problems front and center in the international community’s efforts to end poverty, SDG 16 represents a high-water mark for a trend that has been building steam for years.   This means that issues such as politics, power and institutions cannot be left by donors or their implementing partners for someone else to ‘sort out’.  While this is a positive and welcomed development, we have to acknowledge that achieving significant, transformative results on SDG 16 by 2030 is a tall order.  The mixed track-record of past donor-supported governance and rule of law projects is a sobering reminder of this. Despite their best intentions, historically many grand state-building and institutional strengthening projects have fallen short of their intended goals. If we are to make real progress on SDG 16, this naturally leads us to ask two questions: Why is it so difficult to bring about meaningful change on the issues SDG 16 covers? And, what can we do it about?