GOAL 16 : PEACE , JUSTICE AND STRONG INSTITUTIONS
GOAL 16 : PEACE, JUSTICE AND STRONG INSTITUTIONS
Education is an essential precursor to peace, tolerance and a healthy civil society. People with secondary educations are more likely than those with only primary education to show tolerance for others and behave less violently. Juvenile crime is often associated with local unemployment and poverty. Literate people are also more likely to participate in the democratic process and exercise their civil rights. In Colombia, for example, it was estimated that if all school children completed primary school, they would be 1.5 times more likely to vote for their own economic interests; and their propensity to vote in the next presidential election would increase from 31 to 47%.43 Furthermore, this Goal of Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions promotes transparency and public access to information – education is a crucial precursor to understanding the information made available by governing institutions. Education not only influences this SDG, but education is also influenced by it. There are 24 million children living in 22 countries who are affected by national or regional conflicts. In war-torn areas, education opportunities are interrupted. That leaves millions of children with significant gaps in their development.
‘The threats of international homicide, violence against children, human trafficking and sexual violence are important to address to promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development. They pave the way for the provision of access to justice for all and for building effective, accountable institutions at all levels. While homicide and trafficking cases have seen significant progress over the past decade, there are still thousands of people at greater risk of intentional murder within Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and around Asia. Children’s rights violations through aggression and sexual violence continue to plague many countries around the world, especially as under-reporting and lack of data aggravate the problem. To tackle these challenges and build a more peaceful, inclusive societies, there needs to be more efficient and transparent regulations put in place and comprehensive, realistic government budgets. One of the first steps towards protecting individual rights is the implementation of worldwide birth registration and the creation of more independent national human rights institutions around the world.’
Power Shifts and Conflict
Multipolarity has upended traditional power structures and opened the door to new geopolitical conflicts
The realignment of economic power creates new pathways to conflict – as globalization has spurred higher growth around the world, new countries have emerged as major powers in world politics. This marks an extraordinary advance in terms of human development, as hundreds of millions of people escape poverty and join the middle class. At the same time, however, the economic rise of Brazil, China, India, and other emerging markets has upended the traditional power balance – along with traditional structures of global governance. Whereas in the past a few large, industrialized countries could set the rules for the global economy, today a much broader consensus among nations is required. This is reflected in the increased importance of the G20 (as opposed to the more exclusive G7) as a critical venue for international economic coordination, and in the emergence of greater numbers of institutional investors from emerging markets who now wield global influence – such as the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which began operations in 2016. Most vividly, economic shifts have raised the stakes in the geopolitical competition between the US and China, which sends repercussions throughout the economic system.
Rising multi-polarity, or the distribution of power among a greater number of countries and entities, raises the possibility of a more balanced, and ultimately more legitimate form of global governance; more places can now have more of a say on critical global issues. However, this wider dispersion of power has also created new sources of friction and risk, and in some cases increased the possibility of armed conflict. That is due in part to the fact that the decision-making underpinning global governance does not tend to adapt and change as quickly as the relative influence of the countries involved. There is therefore an urgent need to find new ways to facilitate decision-making and international coordination, to ensure that global challenges can be met effectively. Geopolitical competition undermined the global response to COVID-19, for example. As greater numbers of more diverse countries must now reach agreement on how to address global issues, the gridlock this could result in would benefit no one. The ways in which emerging powers engage with existing structures of global governance, and the ways that established powers react to these changes, will define world politics in the 21st century.
Justice and Human Decision Making
A better understanding of human expertise and experience in the practice of science is critical
Reconstructing crime requires an understanding of physical and digital forms of evidence, and of how experts collect, preserve, analyse, interpret and present that evidence. While the impact of cognitive and psychological factors on how decisions and inferences are made is well documented in many domains, it has yet to be fully evaluated and understood in relation to the application of science in justice systems. Some studies have addressed the impact of environmental factors on judges during sentencing decisions, and research has assessed the impact of factors such as context, motivation, expectations, and experience on decision-making in scientific evaluations of fingerprint and DNA analysis – as well as in fields including forensic anthropology and crime scene investigation. Research has shown that in some circumstances extraneous context can impact the conclusions of forensic science examiners, to the extent that when the same evidence is presented but a different context is provided (or all context is removed), the conclusion of an examiner based on their analysis of that same piece of evidence can change. This is an important consideration for any decision made under conditions of uncertainty, which is often the case for scientists, investigators, judges, legal advocates and policy-makers.
Decision making is critical for the interpretation of evidence, and so better understanding how these decisions are made and how they can be affected by environmental factors should be a priority for any justice system. This is particularly the case for systems where juries of lay people consider the evidence presented by opposing advocates before they deliver a verdict. In these scenarios, the decision making of individual experts is being presented to the court, and jury members are both making decisions as individuals and then reaching a final verdict as a collective, thereby introducing group dynamics as a factor that needs to be considered. As the Fourth Industrial Revolution proceeds, the roles of people in reconstructing crimes and delivering justice are going to change. As technological capabilities enhance our understanding of how decisions are made, there is the potential to increase the transparency of the process. For example, studies have used eye-tracking technology to better understand expert decision-making, and the role of experience both in crime scene management and in reaching conclusions based on evidence presented in crime reconstructions. The interaction of human decision-making with new technologies promises to become an increasingly a critical element of evaluating evidence.
Access to Law and Justice
Many people lack access to legal services and protections, in both poor and wealthy countries
The United Nations has estimated that approximately one billion people – a significant portion of the current global population of 7.7 billion – are legally “invisible” in the sense that they cannot prove who they are officially and retain related legal protections. This lack of access to legal information and institutional assistance puts the dignity, safety, and security of large numbers of people at risk. A lack of access to functioning legal infrastructure, for example, can have significant related impacts on access to healthcare and education – and can restrict individual economic development. This dynamic was recognized in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, established in 2015 to provide a roadmap for a more sustainable global economy by 2030 (goal 16, for example, includes a target of ensuring access to justice for all). Tangible international commitments to build the infrastructure necessary to enable security more broadly and meet these legal needs are therefore critical. Ensuring access to justice, legal advice, legal institutions, and forensic science is a global need. This challenge takes different forms in different places, but is critical in both poor and wealthy countries.
In the US, for example, as many as 90% of the people who find themselves in court in some states go without adequate legal representation, due in part to the high costs of legal fees. Meanwhile the United Kingdom, which has historically provided comprehensive criminal legal aid based on the founding principle that all citizens should have equitable access to public services, has seen large cutbacks. Government spending in the UK on legal aid is reported to have been cut by more than £1 billion since 2012, the number of people receiving advice or assistance in social welfare matters has dropped by 90%, and the number of defendants appearing in court without legal advice or representation has increased significantly. Trust in the justice system is foundational for security and stability in any country. Ensuring access to legal advice and infrastructure that operates in a transparent and robust way remains a critical challenge for both ensuring that trust, and for achieving peaceful and inclusive societies. This requires not only the careful consideration of resources, but also reform of the current oversight of justice systems.
Sustainability and Marketing Teams
Marketing teams are the closest people to your institution’s stakeholders and have the best idea of what stories and communication methods matter to them. It’s great for an institution to have ambitious sustainability goals, but without effective marketing through mainstream channels staff and students can be left unaware of your sustainability initiatives and progress. When behaviour change is an important aspect of your sustainability strategy, collaborating with your marketing or communications team will be vitally important.
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