Logo

Impact of the Pandemic on Measuring Progress of SDG16 Looking Forward, Tackling Obstacles

Date of Meeting: July 12, 2021

Meeting Title: Impact of the Pandemic on Measuring Progress of SDG16+: Looking Forward, Tackling Obstacles 

Meeting Organizer: SDG 16 Data Initiative

ISJC Staff Present: Intern Angelica Sulit

Reporter: Intern Angelica Sulit

Which SDG does this topic cover? SDG 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions

Type of meeting: High Level Political Forum 2021 Side Event

Summary of presentation of information

Miguel Angel Lara Otaola, Senior Democracy Assessment Specialist, International IDEA

  • The Global State of Democracy measures the quality of democracy worldwide based on the 116 indicators for 166 countries within the period of 45 years.
     
  • Measuring the quality of democracy is important because it is an enabler of sustainable development, and it is intrinsically and instrumentally important for development. It is not only vital to SDG16, but as well as to achieving other goals.
    • Intrinsic value: fundamental rights, freedom of expression, association, vote, lead lives
    • Instrumental value: “no famines”, Crisis: Write to MP (Member of Parliament), protests, elections, media, key mechanisms to express and demand public action, powerful incentives to deliver.
       
  • The GSoD indices focus on 4 SDG16 Targets. These targets are directly relevant to the rules and institutions (regime type) needed to achieve sustainable development.
    • 16.3 Promote the rule of law and ensuring equal access to justice for all.
    • 16.5 Substantially reduce corruption and bribery in all their forms
    • 16.6 Develop effective, accountable, and transparent institutions
    • 16.7 Ensure responsive inclusive participatory and representative decision-making at all levels
       
  • The GSoD indices are suggested to be utilised in measuring the quality of democracy and to track the implementation of SDG16 for studies and the like, as they are a good complement to official SDG16 indicators.

Sarah Chamness Long, Director, Access to Justice Research, World Justice Project (WJP)

  • The key challenges in the progress of SDG Focus 16.3 are the rule of law in decline, and unmet justice needs.
  • To measure these findings, WJP uses their Rule of Law Index 2020, which is a quantitative assessment tool designed to measure adherence to the rule of law in practice. It measures how the rule of law is experienced and perceived by ordinary people. It covers 128 countries, with over 500 variables, 130,000+ household interviews, and 4,000+ experts surveyed.
  • Out of the 128 countries included in the index, 22 countries declined in the past year, but improved in the past five years. 20 countries improved in the past year and improved in the past five years. 28 countries declined in the past year and decline in the past five years, and 21 countries improved in the past year but declined in the past five years. Only 20 countries have shown sustained improvements out of the 128 countries included.
  • Based on the decline exemplified by the countries which experienced decline within the past year and the past five years, the factors that greatly affected the decline are constraints on government powers, and fundamental rights, which is a troubling trend.
  • According to the Global Insights on Access to Justice 2019, which polled 100,000+ households in 101 countries between 2017 and 2018, the proportion of the population that experienced a legal problem in the last two years has a global average of 49%, among those legal problems include employment, family, housing, money & debt, and public services. This is also prevalent during the pandemic due to the socioeconomic fall-off.
  • Less than a third of people were able to get any form of help with regards to their legal problems, while 1 in 6 persons are giving up in resolving their problems, and the same proportion find it hard to find the money needed to resolve their problems. Additionally, 2 in 5 people (43%), experience hardship mainly in aspects of health and economic problems.
  • (World Justice Project) As a result of these, and other barriers, 1.4 billion people are unable to resolve their everyday justice problems.
  • Among the reasons why data is hard to gather when it comes to social justice is a broken justice data ecosystem, include overreliance on administrative data from institutions, fragmentation and lack of coordination, infrequent and underused survey data, underdeveloped culture of monitoring, evaluation, and learning, and decrease in capacity and resources due to the COVID pandemic.
  •  To alleviate the problem in data gathering, the following opportunities were enumerated:
    • Use partnerships to test methodologies and increase data availability
    • Use existing data (non-official data in particular)
    • Explore alternative methodologies (online surveys, random digit dialing (RDD) and expert surveys, work in partnership with non-official data producers to pilot alternatives)
       

Haakon Gjerløw, Senior Researcher, Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)

COVID-19 & Conflict

  • There are 14 countries who responded to the call for ceasefire during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Temporary ceasefires, ceasefires that immediately were violated, etc). COVID-19 did not really give a wave of ceasefires, but rather awakened old conflicts.
  • The number of countries threatening freedom of expression jumped from 19 in 2017, to 32 in 2020, the year of pandemic. (Specifically, journalists being supressed from publishing information on countries’ status due to the pandemic.)
  • Key Recommendations on monitoring conflict
    • Support independent media and civil society on basic resources needed
    • Peacekeeping operations

Toby Mendel, Executive Director, Centre for Law and Democracy (CLD)

SDG Target 16.10 – Access to Information and Protection of Fundamental Freedoms

Adoption and Implementation to Access of Information Laws

  • Access to information laws is a cross-cutting issue across the SDGs, serving as support mechanisms to different SDGs which find support from access to information and legislation.
  • Key relationship features between access to information, SDGs and COVID
    • Access to information is essential to accountability (applicable to government and transparency)
    • Trusting governments (this has received a body blow during the pandemic, due to governments asking people to do things outside of their comfort zones.)
      • Transparency in governments give people more grounds to trust their governments, some governments take advantage of the strange situation we are currently in.
    • RTI-rating.org – measures the adoption of access to information laws and legislation.
    • Implementation to access to information system relies to individual public authority.
    • Monitoring performance in the area of access to information laws methodologies:
      • UNESCO methodology survey – survey on official actors on information laws
      • Freedom of Information Advocates Network (FOIAnet) – Civil Society Methodology – applied by civil society organisations
      • Centre for Law and Democracy (CLD) Hybrid Comprehensive Methodology – involving civil society and official actors on these laws
         
  • Based on CLD’s application of the UNESCO methodology in 2019, they found out that most governments don’t keep proper information and statistics on the access to information laws and legislations, and in many cases, governments weren’t being quite honest in their responses, which impacted the data collection quite significantly.
  • Recommendations:
    • (1) Increase in using digital tools (which has escalated a lot during the COVID pandemic),
    • (2) Usage of SDG Process,
    • (3) Support to countries struggling in implementing the laws on information access and legislation
    • (4) Civil society applying more fully the FOIANet methodology in terms of collecting data.
       

Ivana Bjelic Vucinic, Projects Manager, Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD)

Journalism Safety & Threats to Journalism

  • According to the UNESCO Observatory of Killed Journalists, a total of 62 journalists were killed in 2020, compared to 57 in 2019, with 65% killed in non-conflict countries and territories. 25 journalists have been killed so far in 2021.
  • Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ Database) has a specific methodology which evaluates each case to its occupational correlation. 32 cases, according to this database, were killed on the job in 2020, in comparison to 2019 where 26 journalists were killed. In 2021, 14 journalists so far have been killed. In eight of these cases the motive has been confirmed to be related to their occupation. There are trends and analysis on this information available on the CPJ 2020 Report Findings. In at least 8 out 10 cases, murderers of journalists go free.
  • Mexico has been the most dangerous country in the western hemisphere for the press and continues to be so.
  • Journalists were jailed as well during the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic in attempts to suppress reporting of political unrest.
  • Journalism is blocked and impeded in 73 countries and constrained in 59 countries, which represent 73% of the countries this index has evaluated. People’s access to information has deteriorated as well. Online attacks and threats are new forms of violence against journalists, particularly to women in this field of work.
  • Social media platforms serve as online violence enablers, and women journalists rarely receive support from their employers.
  • Recommendations:
    • Reliance on civil society organisations. Governments are not definitive sources of information on the work-related murders of journalists. 19 out of 32 murders of journalists can be associated to political organisations, governments, and military organisations – CPJ Data 2020)
    • Include data that reflect new forms of suppressing journalism and media and endangering safety of journalists and press freedom – online threats and harassment especially those directed towards women.
       

Anne-Séverine Fabre, Data Expert, Small Arms Survey

Methodology and Access to Data

  • Issues in collecting data
    • Agencies that work in silos
    • Different agencies lacking understanding in complementarity of the work and importance of better data collection
    • Capacities and resources restraining ability in collecting (disaggregated) data and deeper research
    • Lag in data collection and analysis
    • Use of existing data for new purposes
       
  • COVID-19 has hampered the traditional ways of collecting data.
  • Digital tools allow us to have wider reach in comparison to face-to-face interactions, however, lack of internet connection in some areas do not allow these things to occur easily.
  • Building trust in new relationships is hard in the COVID-19 digital era due to the lack of informal conversations.
  • Quality and scope of data collected might be affected by the impaired access to information. This is already a situation prior to the pandemic, but it has worsened due to social distancing policies.
     
  • Barriers to gathering data
    • Inability to travel
    • Sudden changes in major conditions linked to COVID-19
    • Border constraints and travel policies
    • Monitoring of remote field data collection
    • Technical difficulties in collecting real-time data
       
  • Possible solution to the barriers
    • Alternative methods to face-to-face (Phone surveys, new methodologies in conducting surveys)
    • Adding modules to existing surveys
       
  • The COVID-19 pandemic has shed light on the importance of data and existing discussions in different areas and avenues. It has taught us to rethink, adapt, and react.

What was of particular significance to share with The Salvation Army globally?

  • Data gathering is vital as well as the analysis. The COVID-19 pandemic has shed light on the importance of these.
  • Stories of injustice are prevailing especially during the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic, indicating unmet justice needs of individual people due to unavailability of basic resources.
  • Data can aid civil society organisations in meeting justice needs of people.
  • Democracy and information is linked together, and is more vital during the era of the pandemic.
  • Non-official data from civil society organisations matter greatly due to the unavailability of official data and discrepancy in the coverage of said official data.

What is The Salvation Army currently doing to address the UN Sustainable Development Goals addressed in this meeting?

  • The Salvation Army has the International Social Justice Commission that addresses various social issues, informing Salvationists and friends with regards to the issues. The ISJC also has research papers and programmes which help address people’s justice needs.
     
  • The Salvation Army’s International Moral and Social Issues Council initiates conversation with regards to societal issues concerning the Army and its affiliates.

What opportunities are there for The Salvation Army to create or further develop the work in this area?

  • The Salvation Army is currently serving in 132 countries where data is available on social justice issues and vital information that should be distributed and addressed. More on-the-ground research and data gathering methodologies could be done in the hopes of addressing people’s individual justice needs, aiding the betterment of The Salvation Army’s programmes for helping people, which is an essential part of becoming God’s hand towards mankind.

Web links & Resources for more information