The TAP Network at the 2024 UN Civil Society Conference in Nairobi, Kenya

 

The 2024 United Nations Civil Society Conference, hosted at the UN Office of Nairobi in Nairobi, Kenya, brought together thousands of Civil Society Organizations from around the world in the lead-up to the Summit of the Future. The conference was the first UN-hosted Civil Society Conference in the Global South, creating an engagement opportunity for CSOs from around the world that might not otherwise be able to secure a visa or finance the high cost of travel to New York or Geneva. As the TAP Network, we enjoyed the opportunity to engage our TAP Network Members & Partners throughout the conference, both through informal meetings over coffee and lunch, and through a #SDG16Now Campaign Workshop.

The TAP Network, along with The Baha’i International Community co-sponsored a #SDG16Now Workshop which kicked off a 6 week-long consultation process on the development of the #SDG16Now Campaign Priorities along with the support of many core partners including The Quaker UN Office, Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just & Inclusive Societies, Global Network of Women Peacebuilders, MY World Mexico, Forus International, and CIVICUS.

The TAP Network’s #SDG16Now Campaign is a global civil society campaign to support accelerated action towards SDG16+ around peaceful, just and inclusive societies. At the halfway point to the 2030 delivery date for the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda,  the campaign calls on governments and the international community to seize upcoming opportunities to bring progress towards the SDGs back on track.  

Interested in learning more and joining the #SDG16Now Campaign? Sign-up for our listserv here.

What was the #SDG16Now Campaign Workshop?

As the world faces more conflicts than ever before, diminishing prospects to foster peace, justice and inclusion in society at large remains a great threat to sustainable development. The geopolitical context in which we operate is increasingly complex due to conflict and the declining trust in institutions and SDG 16 provides the groundwork for addressing these challenges 

In the context of SDG 16’s thematic review at the 2024 HLPF, September’s Summit of the Future and 2025’s World Social Summit and Financing for Development Conference, there are high-level opportunities to call on decisionmakers to place peace, justice, inclusion and accountability at the heart of multilateralism and the UN

The #SDG16Now Campaign workshop began the process to identify priorities that span across 5 main themes: Peace, Justice, Inclusion, Institutions, and Interlinkages & Financing. Discussions were framed to identify “big-ticket”, cross-cutting priorities that act as either enablers or roadblocks to SDG16 or the SDGs overall, unite colleagues and organizations across different thematic spaces around SDG16, and go beyond just a reiteration of asking governments to deliver on their existing commitments to SDG16 issues/targets.

The workshop held breakout discussions on the aforementioned themes and some of the salient observations are named below.  

What are the roadblocks and obstacles to progress on our priority themes?

Peace: 

  • Increased spending on military and weapons that could otherwise be diverted towards humanitarian and development spending
  • A separation of “peace” from “justice” decouples peacebuilding from addressing injustices–peace cannot be obtained through unjust laws
  • Legitimization of violence/force as a tool to resolve conflict both at international and interpersonal levels (and observing how this is tied to patriarchy)
  • Failure to look holistically at root causes of conflict and violence in prevention, including a lack of inclusion of local actors in peacebuilding solutions

Justice & Rule of Law: 

  • Duplication of work at national and sub-national levels. UN agencies are doing direct delivery, but they are taking the space of grassroots organizations and in turn further constraining the funding space
  • Lack of rights literacy, people often do not know their rights are being violated
  • Disproportionate amount of funding allocated to INGOs and lack of due diligence to know the reality on the ground to understand informal and customary justice systems

Inclusion, Civic Space & Human Rights: 

  • Lack of synergy between SDGs and Human Rights & Inadequate political will to facilitate civil society inclusion (at all levels)
  • Lack of civic space compounded by conflict for CSOs, humanitarian workers, and media working in conflict-affected situations
  • Insufficient access to information in order to facilitate engagement, particularly in electoral processes
  • In some cases governments outsource responsibilities to civil society organizations, furthering the trust deficit.

Institutions & Accountability: 

  • Lack of accountability to international laws–corruption and instability within national level contexts and lack of extraterritorial accountability
  • Lack of skills-based training (related to conflict and accountability) for public-service and public-leadership, compounded by political appointments 
  • UN instruments, Charter and UN Security Council are seen as instruments to deliver peace and justice, yet are focused on securitization
  • Responses to weak and fragile states tends to be securitization and peacekeeping, thus undermining peacemaking and accountable, just institutions 

Interlinkages & Financing:

  • Donors/development partners coming with prefixed/rigid mindset or ideas about interventions and projects in calls for proposals;
  • Bureaucracy in obtaining government buy-in resulting in all manner of delays and complexities ;
  • Lack of flexibility for donor funding to allow for timely and effective responses to unexpected emergencies and emerging concerns.

What solutions and policy priorities can be identified that will unite colleagues across the SDG16 Landscape?

Peace: 

  • Reduction in military spending, greater investment in human rights, development, humanitarianism
  • Localisation and decentralisation of peacebuilding programmes. Including through redirecting funding to local peacebuilding CSOs.
  • Conflict sensitive public policies, including urban planning, to provide access to resources, social services and economic opportunities (addressing poverty and inequalities as a root cause of conflict)

Justice & Rule of Law: 

  • Greater pressure for accountability to Human Rights (globally with Universal Periodic Reviews and nationally with National Human Rights Commissions)
  • Civil society inclusion in developing anti-corruption frameworks

Inclusion, Civic Space & Human Rights: 

  • Need for better tracking of civic space and responding to new laws that limit civil society’s capacity to operate freely.
  • Enhanced civil society solidarity and networking, suggesting an alert system to support CSOs in their advocacy for freedom and an enabling environment when civic spaces shrink.
  • Increasing support for resource mobilization to ensure civil society, namely local actors, have access to policymaking spaces

Institutions & Accountability 

  • Compulsory reporting on the implementation of SDGs and advocated for strengthening indicators related to military expenditure, arms control, and corruption.
  • Increasing enforcement and accountability to international laws and coherence of national laws with international obligations
  • Institutions should be re-tooled to address (and resource) local community needs, addressing gap between global and ensuring policymaking is informed by the local reality 

Interlinkages & Financing 

  • The role of global partners, particularly funding institutions, was emphasized as crucial in promoting SDG 16, alongside the need to counter the geopoliticization of aid which leads to leaving behind the communities most in need.
  • Need for flexibility and open-mindedness in consideration for funding and reforms in funding structures and mechanisms
  • Building better relationships between development partners and civil society to safeguard the civic spaces in which CSOs need to operate within;