The sixteenth global goal is to promote peaceful and just societies. While reaching this goal includes overcoming numerous challenges, the global community can still achieve its goal set out until 2030. This involves promoting the rule of law and human rights as well as reducing violence and all crimes relating to it.
Video Transcript
Violence and injustice are inherently unsustainable aspects of society. The world cannot completely and effectively use its resources while inequality still exists and so the United Nations poses with Sustainable Development Goal 16 a series of issues of justice and inequality that must be addressed if we want to fully realize a sustainable and peaceful world.
In precise words, SDG 16 aims to promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.
The first step to building peaceful societies is to reduce violence and violence-related death rates worldwide. The global homicide rate has been on a slow decline from 6.8 percent of deaths in 2000 to 5.8 percent of deaths in 2018, but this number can vary wildly by region: like in sub-Saharan Africa where the homicide rate is 36 percent.
Putting an end to all forms of trafficking includes human trafficking and prostitution, illegal arms dealing money laundering and other such illicit affairs associated with organized crime, all of which contribute to a severely violent society should be a top priority.
Violence against children is also of particular importance since children who witness or are subject to abusive behaviors while young are more likely to repeat the behaviors as adults. In a survey of primarily low and middle-income countries from 2012 to 2019, eight in ten children under the age of 14 were subject to physical or psychological abuse. Among these countries, the rate of reported sexual abuse among children, especially young girls, is around five percent on average, and has decreased little in the past decade
Corruption and bribery are also prevalent in many nations, but especially those of low and middle income, which make it difficult for the average person to access necessary resources. Promoting the rule of law worldwide and at all levels to ensure access to justice will make reporting instances of these crimes easier. This goes hand in hand with developing effective accountable and transparent institutions and ensuring responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision making at international and national levels, encouraging the participation of developing countries and global governments and giving them more of a voice on the world stage will make it easier to fully address their specific issues
As of 2019, 40 of nations had human rights institutions focused on addressing problems in their country and on promoting human rights in compliance with the Paris principles, but in at least 78 countries there is still a lack of a national effort towards human rights for the individual. Perhaps two of the most fundamental steps the UN hopes to accomplish by 2030 are to ensure a legal identity for all persons so that they may be properly accounted for and to mandate universal public access to information so that universal access to justice and social services may be more adequately carried out. In comparison with some of the other goals, more progress has been made in human rights and on SDG 16, but much work is needed to achieve a truly sustainable peaceful world by 2030