A United Nations panel has recommended that access to information be one measurement among 229 other “indicators” of national progress toward sustainable development.
The recommendation represented a come-from-behind victory for access advocates.
Although access to information had been included as a target (16.10) in the 2015 UN Sustainable Development Goals, it was not identified as a target to measure, greatly reducing the significance of its inclusion.
An expert working group was continuing to revise the indicators, however, and in its latest list, an access indicator is included:
16.10.2 Number of countries that adopt and implement constitutional, statutory and/or policy guarantees for public access to information
Supporters of an access indicator had argued that 16.10 required two indicators. It states:
16.10 Ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements
The UN body developing the list of indicators, however, had provide just one indicator:
16.10.1 Number of verified cases of killing, kidnapping, enforced disappearance, arbitrary detention and torture of journalists, associated media personnel, trade unionists and human rights advocates in the previous 12 months
The dual indicator recommendation, by the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal Indicators, next goes to the UN Statistical Commission, in March and then to the UN General Assembly, in September.
Also in the future will be the development of a specific methodology to measure the adoption and implementation of access to information, with the implementation metric likely the trickiest. The expert working group has suggested that the Statistical Commission instruct the expert working group to deliberate over the next year about how specifically to do measurements where the data is weak (Tier II) or a methodology not internationally agreed upon (Tier III).
Some perspective “the resistance we encountered in pressing for the inclusion of Goal 16” into the SDGS came in a Feb. 24 speech by US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power. She said the resistance “revealed some of the old-fashioned views of development that have been hard to shake for many.” She continued:
Such as the view that advancing good governance belongs merely in the political sphere, and not in the development sphere; or that it is only developing countries that have to work to reduce poverty and inequality, and not developed countries. While we may have succeeded in securing Goal 16’s inclusion in the SDGs, whether we are effective in fulfilling this goal will depend in significant measure on convincing all countries, and not just the ones that take it to be self-evident, that building good governance is a key to fighting poverty and inequality.
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