How to promote the rapid and effective implementation of the ‘SDG 16+’ agenda?
Background
The Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies is a group of UN member states, international organizations and societal partners geared towards implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Through the notion of ‘SDG 16+’, it promotes a more holistic understanding of SDG 16 that includes relevant targets and indicators from other goals. Switzerland is one of the conveners of the initiative. In the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, SDG 16 risks being an ‘orphan goal’, constituting a cross-sectoral agenda that is quite abstract for advocacy purposes, while being the crucial backdrop for the implementation of many of the other goals.
Objective
To explore programming entry-points beyond national implementation frameworks in order to generate constructive political coalitions across the public and private sectors, and from the regional to the local levels. Moreover, a business case should be made for violence prevention/reduction (VP/R), developing innovative communication strategies that convince stakeholders to invest in programs with potentially elusive and difficult-to-measure outcomes, and where the potential for scaling up and transferability to other settings is hard to ascertain.
Expected Benefits
• In target countries: Move away from a donor-driven view of development assistance and a focus on new models of local delivery and making use of financial instruments (e.g. social impact bonds or results-based financing) that could open a sustainable funding stream for VP/R. In addition, this work would build on research on the business case for prevention, in order to produce simple, clear narratives that could attract new investors and potentially a new class of donors (especially in the private sector), thereby opening new markets and new employers. Deliverables would consist of tools for monitoring immediate effects coupled with a strong theory of change for the longer term. This includes developing transformational programing frameworks in-country and internationally.
• In Switzerland. Geneva is recognized as a global knowledge hub for work on violence prevention and reduction (VP/R). Building on the existing impetus of the Pathfinders process, the project would seek to situate VP/R – and the implementation of SDG 16+ – within Geneva’s strong policy-practitioner communities in the fields of development, security sector reform, and peacebuilding.
Contact Information
Dominic Eggel, , phone: +41 22 908 58 02
The Graduate Institute, Geneva
