Every year, the international community gathers at United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York to take stock of progress on the global plan for peace and prosperity agreed by all states in 2015. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – an interconnected set of 17 goals with 169 targets – promise to end poverty and hunger, ensure a liveable and sustainable planet and achieve gender equality, among many other laudable aims. With their focus on human rights, social justice and accountability, the SDGs reflect extensive civil society advocacy. They’re supposed to be achieved by 2030, but they’re badly off track.

The UN’s recent SDGs report makes clear how big the implementation gap is. The report highlights growing inequalities, an escalating climate crisis, accelerating biodiversity loss and limited progress on gender equality. These challenges are compounded by horrific conflicts in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine and elsewhere, resulting in human rights violations on a huge scale and causing some 120 million people to be forcibly displaced worldwide.

Alarmingly, only 17 per cent of targets are on track. There’s been minimal or moderate progress on around half. Worse still, progress on over a third has stalled or regressed. None of the targets on ending poverty or addressing the climate crisis are being met, and only one of nine gender equality targets is on track.

SDG16 and civic space

That’s the sobering context in which the annual review of progress on the SDGs is taking place. At this year’s High-Level Political Forum (HLPF), held between 8 and 18 July, representatives from 36 countries are showcasing their achievements on the SDGs, presenting reports known as Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs).

One of the goals up for review this year is SDG16. Focusing on peace, justice and accountable, effective and inclusive institutions, this is a key goal for civil society. Crucially, it includes targets on protecting fundamental freedoms, guaranteeing access to information and ensuring inclusive, participatory, responsive and representative decision-making. These hard-won commitments recognise the importance of accountability, participation and transparency to achieving the SDGs.

SDG16 matters for civil society because it addresses fundamental freedoms, including the key civic freedoms of association, expression and peaceful assembly, that must be respected for civil society to play its full range of roles – from delivering services to advocating for policy change and holding economic and political decision-makers to account. When fundamental freedoms are protected, people can organise, mobilise and speak out to shape the economic, social and political structures that affect their lives. If SDG16 is respected, it means civil society is empowered to partner with governments and the private sector to help achieve all of the goals.

One of the indicators for SDG16 makes starkly clear what success or failure in protecting fundamental freedoms means: it counts the number of human rights advocates, media workers and trade unionists who’ve been killed, kidnapped, disappeared, arbitrarily detained and tortured. That’s what’s at stake.

But there’s a problem: the latest report shows not a single SDG16 target is on track. A major reason for this, and for insufficient progress across the SDGs, is the restriction of civic space in many countries. According to the CIVICUS Monitor, our collaborative research project that tracks the health of civic space, only around two per cent of people worldwide live in open civic space conditions, where civil society is free to exist and operate. The situation has deteriorated over time, with civic space closing in more and more countries. Of the 36 countries slated to present their VNRs this year, only three – Austria, Palau, and Samoa – have open civic space.

This is the opposite of what’s supposed to happen with the SDGs. Where civic space isn’t open, people have limited ability to demand the social and economic progress the SDGs are supposed to bring and ensure development is shaped around their needs. People who expose corruption, demand accountability and advocate for the rights of excluded groups are attacked.

In many countries around the world, civil society organisations and activists are in the firing line. They’re being hemmed in by new laws and the abuse of legislation supposed to mitigate threats such as terrorism, online crime and disinformation. Organisations are having their funding called into question and cut off. Authorities are increasingly using arrests and detentions of protesters and violence against protests to try to subdue activism. States are prosecuting human rights activists and journalists in growing numbers. Most at risk are people who challenge economic, political and social power relations: climate and environmental activists, and those demanding Indigenous, LGBTQI+ and women’s rights.

Need for access

A greater focus on implementing SDG16 and holding states to account over their performance on the goal would help begin to reverse dismal civic space trends. The annual HLPF could offer a key opportunity to apply some pressure. But the restriction of civil society at the national level is mirrored in its international-level exclusion. States that repress civil society at home are notorious for creating obstacles to participation at the UN.

Civil society is always sent to the back of the queue in UN processes. The HLPF is no exception. It makes no official provision for including civil society voices in VNR processes. All civil society organisations can do is produce parallel ‘shadow reports’ and present them on the forum’s sidelines. This undermines civil society’s potential for meaningful participation and hinders its ability to hold states to account. It’s also inefficient, leading to duplication of efforts and data inconsistencies.

A key opportunity for change was missed last year, when the UN held an SDGs summit as part of the annual high-level opening week of the UN General Assembly in New York. But while states acknowledged progress has been too slow and some recent gains are being reversed, they essentially restated existing commitments. They made no significant new funding commitments and the summit’s final statement said nothing on civil society, apart from a single mention of the need to engage all relevant stakeholders. It was silent on civic space.

The SDGs won’t be achieved without an environment where civil society can thrive and participate meaningfully in international decision-making and accountability processes, without fear of reprisals. That’s why many civil society organisations have banded together in the UNMute Civil Society initiative to advocate for practical ways to challenge civil society’s exclusion from UN spaces. The UN needs to take up these ideas. It could demonstrate leadership and a commitment to addressing civic space restrictions by bringing civil society into the mainstream at the HLPF.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org