SDG16+ Storytelling Initiative

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2030 Agenda) is envisioned as a plan of action for people, planet, prosperity, peace, and partnership—one that will free humanity from the tyranny of poverty and want to heal and secure the planet for future generations. While significant efforts have been made at all levels to realise the vision of the 2030 Agenda, most governments are behind schedule in achieving the ambitious targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG16 on peaceful, just, and inclusive societies. The world faces the pressing reality of backsliding progress towards sustainable development in many countries and communities. 

Further, while there are some existing reporting mechanisms to track progress on SDG16-related issues, such as the Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs), the Universal Periodic Reviews (UPRs), and other global processes that facilitate civil society engagement, these instruments are not enough to bring accountability to ensure that nations are meeting their obligations, provide sufficient detail, and adequately utilise localised data. Next to that, in most cases, reporting mechanisms fail to fully incorporate insights from civil society, making official processes exclusionary of crucial actors in reporting the realities on the ground. Finally, civil society actors and the peacebuilding field tend to struggle to form messaging that resonates with policymakers and the general public, resulting in a lack of a constituency for SDG16. 

In this context, the international community must highlight and amplify the stories of work being done by civil society and other stakeholders to demonstrate the leadership role of civil society in driving progress towards SDG16+ at national and local levels. Furthermore, spotlighting these efforts can raise awareness of the interlinkages between SDG16 and other components of the 2030 Agenda, and how peaceful, just, and inclusive societies can pay dividends in other sectors such as climate action, good health and well-being. By strengthening civil society’s ability to tell its own story on the value of SDG16, the international community can create an enabling environment that brings more funding, resources, and political will to the implementation of SDG16. 

Having already surpassed the halfway point to 2030, this SDG16+ Storytelling Initiative will serve to utilise storytelling as a vehicle to strengthen civil society’s capacity for storytelling related to their work on SDG16+, promote sharing and learning of best practices and success stories within the SDG16+ community, and culminate in a written compendium of insights from the national level, to be launched in the margins of the Second World Summit for Social Development in November 2025. 

This initiative will build on existing work of the co-organising partners: The Alliance for Peacebuilding (AfP), the Civil Society Platform for Peacebuilding and Statebuilding (CSPPS), Forus International and the Transparency, Accountability and Participation (TAP) Network, as well as collaborative efforts such as the Voices of SDG16+ Campaign, the SDG16Now Campaign’s Halfway to 2030 Report, the Alliance for Peacebuilding’s “What is Peacebuilding” series and Forus International’s 2024 report, Rebuilding Trust for Inclusive Governance. Local and national stakeholders need to come together to analyse where progress stands on SDG16+ to share promising approaches and successes in advancing SDG16, integrate SDG16 across all of the 2030 Agenda, and identify key areas where further action, commitments, and accountability are needed to get the SDGs back on track.