 questions before we get into the description of the findings of the report are very simple and very straightforward. Why is SDG16 especially important for achieving the other SDGs? And the report shows why progress on these SDG16 is stagnant. We start with John Romano, coordinator of transparency, accountability and participation network. John? Thanks a lot, Massimo. It's a big question for us to start out with. I won't go into too much detail now because I'll also talk about the interlinkages between SDG16 and the rest of the 2030 agenda in my main remarks. But I think one thing for me is reflecting on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in particular, I think we saw very clearly where there's been a critical lack of investment around SDG16 issues. So a lack of investment in institutions and governance and justice over many years and decades even, I think, you know, exposed some some cracks within societies and within institutions that quite frankly, you know, may have led to or exacerbated some of the challenges that we faced with the COVID-19 pandemic. And I think one thing to think about going forward is, you know, in a world of, you know, many crises and emerging crises, global crises, down to the local level, how can we utilize SDG16 as kind of a almost an antidote to these global crises. I think that's one thing to kind of frame our discussion around. And then in that context, how can the data tell us where priorities need to be or where we're lacking in progress or how to explore the interlinkages a bit better. I'm going forward. So again, I won't go into too much detail on that right now, but just some, you know, just some initial thoughts to begin with. Thanks a lot. Let me turn now to Ivana Vucinic, Director of the International Media Policy and Advisory Centre at the Global Forum for Media Development. What is your opinion, Ivana? Hello, everyone. It's so very nice to see you all. Well, as John said, not to go too much into details, but looking at the SDG16 goal and the mention of inclusive, effective and accountable institutions, which are, you know, essential to guarantee the fulfillment of other sustainable goals in 2030 agenda. And then looking at how SDG16 is important when we talk about accountability, where strong institutions built together with an empowered civil society and justice depend on those public watchdogs that are keeping governments, private companies and powerful individuals under control. And then this brings in the media and the sector that we are dealing with, the Global Forum for Media Development, where journalists, media workers and other human rights activists are the ones engaged in monitoring the development and progress towards achieving the SDGs. Trustworthy public interest media are the ones raising awareness about the importance of respecting fundamental rights, taking action against climate change, improving the conditions of citizens around the world. And those same public watchdogs are the ones raising, are the ones most impacted by institutional and private harassment and attacks and life threats that often result in murders, all intended to silence them. So, they're most, those are the most interested groups in having access to information from states and companies in order to ensure that everyone else has access to information. And if we're going to the second question right away, looking back again to the building effective, accountable, inclusive institutions element of the SDG16 goal, many authors of the chapters also noted that there is a dependence and sensitivity related to the political situation in each country. So, why there is no progress? Because of this dependence, which presents a challenge for achieving this goal. And media freedoms underpin this goal and all SDG16 goals. And more than 90% of the world's population lives in countries where the level of press freedom is regarded as problematic, difficult, or very serious. So, we've seen the backslide in media freedoms and public interest information with democracy and fundamental freedoms deteriorating globally, which affects progress towards SDG16 goal. Thank you, Ivana. We'll get back to that when we talk about the results and the findings. Let me now ask the same question to Grace Ulsman, Senior Research Associate at the World Justice Project. Grace? Thank you, Massimo. And thank you all for having me here today. So, to the question about the relevance of goal 16 for the other SDGs, you know, from the World Justice Project, some of our prior research has shown that justice needs are ubiquitous. About half of the people we surveyed for our 2019 global insights on access to justice report have experienced a justice problem in the two years prior. And the most common problems that people experience relate to consumer issues, housing, and money and debt. While these are kind of everyday problems that can arise for folks, when these issues go unresolved, they can have cascading effects that negatively impact people's lives in a multitude of ways. And this goes back to something you, Ivana, mentioned about how this ties into other goals because when someone has unresolved justice problems, these cascading effects can hit other components of the 2030 agenda, such as the goals that relate to ending poverty, ensuring healthy lives, and reducing inequality. And to the second question we're considering about stagnation on goal 16, I think there are a lot of factors at play. First, I want to reiterate something that John mentioned about the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and how this really has, I think, posed challenges for goal 16 and exacerbated existing goals, existing challenges. Through data shows that progress on goal 16 was stagnant before the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, research from NAMATI has identified funding and security issues as two key barriers to delivering justice services. And these had been ongoing challenges. And then overall, I would say one of the key factors, and I think one of the main reasons why the work of the data initiative is relevant now is that this lack of data is a key barrier to advancing progress because in a lot of ways we have a hard time understanding what the current status of goal 16 is around the world due to a lack of information that inhibits visibility into this topic. I'll leave it at that for now, but thank you so much. Great. Thank you very much, Grace. Alexander Hudson, Democracy Assessment Specialist at International Aedia. What's your take on the two questions I posed? Well, with regard to the first question, I want to make an argument that democracies provide efficiency in development outcomes. And by that, I mean that there can be a transmission of useful information from the people who actually experience whether or not development happens, whether or not governments deliver upwards. And that's related also to what Yvonne mentioned about accountability. So where you have inclusive and accountable governance, you will achieve more effective, efficient development outcomes. Secondly, you should also expect that in a situation where there's a lot of participation, such as you should find in a democracy, there would be more sustainability built into it that way, that the development is not coming solely through initiatives developed in the capital, but that it also comes through the participation of people in development. And then regarding the second question, I want to give sort of a historical answer, but very short. And that is that, though we did not realize it at the time, 2012 was something of a local high watermark and democratic achievement globally. And it was about then that the effects of the financial crisis on democracy began to be felt. And so democracy globally has been encountering difficulties since 2012. So the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals occurred in a moment of more systemic difficulty in terms of democratic governance. And so I think that's one reason why progress has been slow. Secondly, of course, these sorts of broad societal and institutional changes that are required to achieve progress on SDG 16 in particular are just hard to achieve even in the most favorable circumstances and require a kind of consistent effort that I think has been lacking. Thanks, Alex. Now, Gergely Ideg, Survey Specialist and Methodology Advisor at the Small Arms Survey. Gergely. Hello, everyone. We are concerning this stagnation. My data kind of suggests at least up until 2020 that our dataset has been updated, a rather favorable trend. So I'm not going to address that part, although I'm guessing that trend is changing as well for the worse in terms of lethal violence. So my chapter and my colleagues and my expertise in violence and violence reduction and quite trivially violence and lack of violence or peace is a key enabler of all the spectrum of SDG. So without peace, you can't do much. Now we see that in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, how lives are devastated and communities are devastated by violence. But even if there is no war but a high level of social violence, that usually means that investments that normally go to health care, to education, to all kinds of initiatives that relate to human advancement or societal advancement are redirected to law enforcement, to building prisons and to just trying to keep the streets safe. That is reflected by the enormous budgets of the police department in the US, for example. So I don't think it needs much argument that peace is a key enabler of the whole SDG framework. The World Bank had a study on the millennium development goals in 2011 where they found that countries which had been in conflict or were very fragile at that time showed zero progress on MDGs. So we can assume that the similar would happen in the SDG agenda as well. Finally, what is often overlooked that peace is also a key prerequisite of having feedback on the progress of social development. So without peace you don't have functioning state services that would collect all the data that now we are analyzing in most cases throughout the SDG spectrum that would help us to see if we are on track or not in achieving our SDGs. So peace is very important enabler of the feedbacks that we are collecting at the end. Thanks a lot, Gergelli. Let me turn to Tobi Mendel, Executive Director, Center for Law and Democracy. Tobi, your views. Thank you, Massimo, and I have one quick point for each of these questions. And my first point is, I mean, if we think of SDG 16 as really being a foundation of democracy, human rights and good governance for societies, it's hardly new to connect that to development success. I don't want to date myself, but from 92 to 94, 30 years ago I worked in CEDA's Canadian International Development Agency's Human Rights Policy Unit, and we spent that time studying those links, and it was very well established even at that point. And just to give a couple of current examples, I mean, a year and nearly two years ago, Myanmar fell off a Democratic cliff, and it quickly fell off a developmental cliff as well. And even China, which for a very long time seemed to buck that trend. Now in the post-COVID period, we're seeing sort of bizarre, autocratic responses to COVID from China that seem to be really impacting its economic growth and other development issues. So I think it's a well-established point. On the second point, I think if we step above some of the detail of the SDG indicators, I think it's no secret. In fact, it's notorious that the world is going through a radical Democratic backsliding these days. And it's not just sort of semi-autocratic countries or countries struggling with democracy, even the most developed democracies. And I won't mention name, but some of the most developed Western countries have struggled even to hold up for election. So I think everybody knows what I'm talking about. So I think that we've seen a very significant backsliding globally of democracy. And of course, as we measure our SDG16 indicators, that gets reflected in that. So those are my comments to those two issues. Thanks. Well, I'm trying to guess what you were referring to. Maybe I will understand it by the end of today. Thank you, Toby. Great points. Let me turn now to Fletcher Cox, visiting scholar from the University of Denver, and also at the International Idea. Fletcher, your take on this. Awesome. Thanks so much. I think my comments will echo some of the sentiments of Toby and also Gurgley. But SDG16 is a very ambitious, forward-looking goal. But it's really embedded in evidence from peace research. As they've both very clearly articulated, extreme poverty concentrates in conflict-affected countries. There's really strong research that shows the condition of conflict-affectedness or fragility correlates with a lack of progress. This was true of the MDGs, and it looks like it's true from this report of the SDGs as well. Well, we know from peace research that wars and protracted armed conflicts increased poverty in the short term as well as the long term, often by undermining government institutions in terms of authority, capacity, and legitimacy. And then there's a third dimension here that I think will be relevant to our overall conversation is if you look at the Journal of Peace Research and their annual report on dynamics of armed conflict, one of the new things about armed conflict today is that armed conflicts are increasingly internationalized. It means that their effects aren't concentrated in one particular place. They spill over very, very quickly. And so spillovers and conflict complexes have really fed into the global refugee crisis. And as we know, the global refugee crisis has played a role in causing many countries to become more inward-looking than outward-looking. And a lot of this has to do with domestic politics. It can be difficult to win an election by kind of running on increasing official development assistance rather than focusing on issues that might be closer to home. On the second issue, again, there's a lot to say that I know will come out in our conversation today. But in Alex's chapter from International Idea, he was talking about the Montreal Protocol might be an example of a moment of effective international collective action. And just kind of taking a look at the political economy research around kind of why the Montreal Protocol was effective at a particular moment in history. There's some unique conditions there that might lead us to think about particular factors that might explain why we're seeing stagnation around a goal like SDG-16. Around Montreal, there was kind of relative certainty of what non-response would look like. There's a relatively low-cost kind of global response. The interest groups that could potentially organize and mobilize against global efforts at that moment in history were kind of relatively weak. And then there's a lot of research that shows kind of the importance of U.S. leadership in important moments where effective global governance has moved forward. So those issues of certainty and cost and interest groups and kind of dynamics of power in the international system, I think they're all relevant for thinking very carefully about where we are today around progress on SDG-16. Thank you, Fletcher. Let's complete this first to the table with Miguel Angel Lara Otaola, Senior Democracy Assessment Specialist at International Idea. What are your views, Miguel? Thank you, Massimo, and hi, everyone. I'll be quick. As you know, goal-16 aims to promote just peaceful and inclusive societies. And to do so, it sets out 10 specific targets, which includes things like promoting the rule of law, building accountable institutions, encouraging transparency, access to information, protecting the freedom of speech, and other fundamental freedoms. So as you can see, these targets in combination describe democracy. And democracy and the other sustainable development goals, as you have mentioned, are interlinked and are mutually reinforcing. And why is this? It's simply because democracy has a double value. Democracy is not only valuable in itself, but it also contributes to the delivery of other goods from health and education to gender equality, etc. The full list of 17 goals is there. First, I want to say that democracy is valuable in itself, both as a political system and as a way of life. This is because, basically, freedom matters. Being able to express yourself, to participate, to choose, to vote, that matters for human dignity in itself. And second, democracy is also instrumentally valuable. It is because these freedoms and rights that I just mentioned help us achieve other goals and think of it this way. Democracy provides a sort of enabling environment where people can express themselves and hold their leaders accountable. So let's say that if you want to change something or if there's something wrong in your community or your country, you can speak up, you can go to your local radio station, you can sign a petition, you can protest, you can send a letter to your congressman or woman, you can participate in an NGO and advocate, you can take to the streets and all these things matter. And in authoritarian countries, this is not possible. So it's with this in mind that we produce this report and why SDG16 matters so much for the 2030 agenda. Thank you. Thank you, Miguel. Very interesting bird's eye view of the outlook. Now we have an opportunity to go more in depth in analyzing some of the targets and the issues covered by the broad area of SDG16 through our data initiative. And we start again with John Romano from the top network. John, you already anticipated that you would have addressed something related to interlinkages. So please, John, go ahead. Thanks very much, Massimo. And just as an introduction to the top network for those that we haven't worked with already, the top network, top stands for transparency, accountability, and participation. We're a global network of civil society working around SDG16 plus collectively and around accountability for the 2030 agenda. I think I won't go into too much detail on the interlinkages between SDG16 targets and all the other SDGs because as we've heard already, it's our belief that SDG16 is not only linked with every other SDG, but that it underpins the entire 2030 agenda. So I think we could be here all day if we were touched on the individual interlinkages here. But I think I just wanted to highlight some of the things that we highlighted in the data initiative report. I think it's really clear for us on the value of why interlinkages are important. I mean, interlinkages can show us where there are high yield opportunities for positive progress. Investment in one area can lead to a double win around other issues. We know that that's the case. We've heard it just now from previous interventions where investment in SDG16 can lead to development gains elsewhere, and the opposite is also true. So interlinkages also can show us where there are trade-offs and negative externalities of lack of investment or investment in other areas or even other SDGs and where those trade-offs are, which is also important to think about as well. I think one of the primary issues related to interlinkages, I think this is fairly obvious, but I'll say it anyways, is that implementation is siloed. And this is true from government agencies, but it's also true for civil society or international institutions. Each of us kind of work on our own issues. And I think it's really tough to address where those interlinkages are in real terms. And I think this is also why data is so important for us. Because on top of thinking about, okay, where can my efforts or government's efforts, again, kind of yield those double-win opportunities, is where are we seeing progress? And I think that's one thing that I think data is important for. It's about telling a story. Data is about storytelling in its purest form. I mean, data points are absolute, but then data is only as useful as the narrative that we craft around it. And so I think the link with how we tell that story is hugely important. And the interlinkages, we can talk in abstract terms about interlinkages. And SDG-16 itself is very abstract and very complex, as we know. But I think seeing where those interlinkages play out in real terms and how they affect real people, I think is hugely important for us to not just identify where interlinkages are, but then rationalize to governments or decision makers or policy makers on why investment in SDG-16 is so necessary, especially at this point in time in history. If we can tell a story of how people are experiencing progress or lack thereof, I mean, that's the rationale for investment and action right there, as opposed to talking about the indicators and the data and stuff like that. That's compelling to some, but again, how do we sell this message beyond just policy makers and decision makers? I think it's something for us to think about as well. I think one thing, there's a lot, there's a big body of work around interlinkages. We mentioned some of these in our chapter in the report. The Danish Institute for Human Rights has done quite a bit of analysis around the interlinkages between the 2030 agenda and the human rights, international human rights mechanisms. And their analysis found that I think 59% of all of the recommendations to international human rights treaty bodies were directly relevant or interlinked with SDG targets just directly, 59%. So I think highlighting the interlinkages between the SDGs and human rights is also another key entry point for us, especially given that the SDGs are voluntary. I think thinking about ways that we can get governments to care more and to act more in a more coordinated fashion and to also remove the duplication in recording efforts that we also hear as a complaint from governments. There's too much reporting obligation for them. I think we need to make those arguments that there are many ways for us to address this in a multi-dimensional way. There are many other reports on this. Again, I won't go into detail. You can find more information on other studies and bodies of work around the interlinkages themselves in that chapter. But again, just going back to the storytelling side of things, I think one of the reasons that we even started the data initiative collectively, all of us, was the recognition that not just implementation and action was siloed, but data collection itself was siloed. And there's often this very territorial nature of data collection, especially when it comes to the government side and the national statistical office side. And I think for good reason, you know, and the challenge here is funding. Data collection is not easy. It's not cheap in many cases. But I think one of the highest yield opportunities for us in terms of data collection is, again, the data that tells the story the best, and in our view, qualitative data or perception or experiential data is hugely important. Because from a reporting perspective, from a storytelling perspective, I mean, to me there's no better way to find out how people are experiencing progress or feeling progress than to ask them. Right? I mean, we can report on administrative indicators, you know, until we're blue in the face, until 2030. But what that means in terms of how people experience progress, I think is best done by asking people how they're experiencing progress. So I think, again, around the storytelling side of things, I think we need to do better at making a compelling story and an argument for why investment now is needed. We face many, many emerging crises in the world. How do we pitch STG16 as an antidote to these big global challenges? And part of it is through the interlinkages, we say, we know that investment in STG16 yields, again, progress towards XYZ. And telling the story of how people experience progress based on that investment and action, I think is hugely important, not just for convincing policymakers, but also the general public. How do we get more behind the STGs and the STG summit coming up next year is also a critical moment for us to kind of mobilize around that as well. So there's a lot more to talk about on interlinkages, but I'll stop there for now, and also happy to take any questions. Thanks a lot, John. You're adding this element, STG16 as an antidote to the global crisis, which adds to the previous conversation we had on the STG16 as an enabler for the 2030 agenda. Thank you very much, John. And now, as you know, this is a report that was launched for the first time in 2016, so there are various years already of work that you can compare. Let's look at some data from the perspective of the target number 10.3, which is about access to information. Ivana Wucinic from the Global Forum Media Development. Thank you, Massimo. Thank you so much. So I'm here to present the chapter on STG1610, and this was co-authored by me, but I have to mention my colleague, Laura Bicanabol, she's an advocacy and policy manager at GFMD, and here present Toby Mendel, who also contributed to this chapter as well as writing another chapter he'll present later. Related to the STG1610 and the progress made on that, I just wanted to share very quickly just a couple of slides here, because we are a data initiative, so for data sometimes slides work a bit better. So the title of our chapter already suggests that this progress is weak, and I would like to elaborate on why. This is the STG1610 target, ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms in accordance with national legislation and international agreements, and these are the two indicators that I will be talking about. One is the STG1610-1, 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, it's a bit long, and indicator 1610-2 number of countries that adopt and implement constitutional statutory and or policy guarantees for public access to information. Now, to talk about the indicator 1610-1, it's mostly related to freedom of information, access to information and safety of journalists. There are a couple of sources for the data, and we've been looking at these, the progress since 2015 for some of the data. One of the source of data is UNESCO Observatory, which is an official source of data, and the other one is committee to protect journalists, which is the leading CSO providing data on these indicators. And as you can see, when we talk about the number of killed journalists, there is a decrease from 2015 until today, and both organizations report this decrease. So UNESCO is reporting 116 kills in 2015 and 62 in 2020, and 55 in 2021. CPJ is reporting 100 killings in 2015, 15 in 2020, and 45 in 2021. So there is a decline, but on the other hand, there's another story, and this goes back to what John was saying about the necessity to put data in context. This is the information about journalists who are imprisoned over the same period, or even longer periods. So this is CPJ data on journalists being imprisoned since 1992, and when you look at this, this has broadly continued to rise, and even including since 2015 when these goals were set. So as Toby would say, and I'm going to stop briefly now to share, okay, stop sharing, as Toby would say, it kind of indicates that this is one step forward, two step back situation. And in this sense, in this sense, we also connect this with impunity. Safety and journalists is also very related to impunity. And since this report was launched on November 3rd and 4th, there was a 10th anniversary of the UN plan of action on the safety of journalists and the issue of impunity in Vienna. And although it was noted there were some achievements and creation of national safety mechanisms in about 50 countries, it also notes, and it was noted that despite these achievements, challenges still exist. High rate of impunity for crimes against journalists persists. And there are new forms of threats that develop in unprecedented ways. So what are the things that are missing? And this is what many of you, I'm guessing we'll talk about the nuances pertaining to general issue of safety of journalists that are not captured by just looking at single data. So it is, and UNESCO's World Trends Report also states that we need to look at and give greater attention to threats, including various forms of online violence that affect women, minority journalists. Then the COVID-19, as many mentioned, exacerbated health challenges for journalists. Also, what many of you reflected is that this report does not capture the data in 2022, which reflects the situation in Ukraine and numbers that include deaths and killings of journalists and media workers resulting from Russia's invasion on Ukraine. So if we look at the mid-August data, UNESCO's observatory will say that there were 10 journalists that were killed in Ukraine out of a total of 40, 46, and CPG data is pretty similar. So if we look at all these sets of data separately and without context, the global democratic black sliding, we wouldn't be able to assess the progress, cover within the context and by comparing contrasting data and looking at the nuances, there is little progress and constant threat of regression. It is evident that fundamental freedoms, including access to information and freedom of expression are incredibly hard to win and never fully protected against political turmoil, crises, democratic regression. And just to go back to indicator 16-10-2, which is relevant for the adoption of access to information laws. And Toby stated here that if we set a modest goal that by 2030, the number of countries with which lack RTI laws is increased by 50% and looking at the data, we are fully on track. But if the level of ambition is increased from 50% to 75%, then we are rather far behind. And there are nuances to the indicator 16-10-2. So it might be relatively easy to track adoption of legal guarantees for this right, but assessing the degree to which these guarantees conform to the standards of international law is much more complex. And assessing how well states are doing in terms of implementing those guarantees, access to information is even more complex. So, Amanda, if you would let me share just one more slide here to kind of make it easier to explain. Here we go. So this one is related to strength of RTI laws. So this is also prepared by Toby. And here you can see that there has been, but if we look at the assessment of the quality of laws adopted between 2015 and 2020, there has been improvement, but then there has been decline. So the 2015 to 2020 average is nowhere near as high as the average for 2005 and 2010, which was the best period for the quality of these laws. And for the 2022, the laws that were adopted were pretty weak, Amanda, we can stop sharing. Easier like this. But it is a small sample of just five laws that have been adopted in the 2022. Now, if we also talk about implementation of RTI laws, there are three different methodologies. RTI evaluation, UNESCO, mixed self-assessment and freedom of information advocates network, FOIA network methodologies. I'm not going to go into details on these methodologies. There is all of that in the chapter, but to point out that data have been evolving over time. So it is difficult to compare the data. So from year to year, because if the data sets change, it's hard to kind of compare and draw conclusions. And there is no central depository for these assessments that kind of puts all the data in one place. And finally, to conclude this part of our conversation, progress towards achievement of the indicator 1610-2 can be described as modest, unless we set a very low goal. So if we're a bit more ambitious, it's a very modest progress. And it is clear that more needs to be done in terms of adopting and improving the strength of the RTI laws. On the implementation side, more still needs to be done to generate reliable and comparative data. And then we're going back to the title of our chapter, which concludes that the progress on access to information and respect for fundamental freedoms is weak as we approach the halfway point. Thank you very much, Ivana. So we have weak progress. We need more data, but we need also to put them in context. And the general sense is that we are not living up to the ambitions of when we adopted the 2030 agenda on this topic. Let me now turn to Grace Holtzmann on the access to justice and the rule of law target of SDG 16. Grace. Wonderful. Thank you, Massimo. And thank you, Ivana, for your presentation. Everyone should be able to see my slides. Please stop me if you cannot. So as Massimo mentioned, my name is Grace Holtzmann, and I'm a senior research associate with the world justice project where I work on our access to justice research portfolio. The world justice project seeks to advance the rule of law and access to justice around the world. And one of the ways we do this is through inter-organizational partnerships, such as with the SDG 16 data initiative. Our contribution to this year's report focuses on goal 16.3. Goal 16.3 is specifically focused on strengthening the rule of law and access to justice. Goal 16.3 is important for two primary reasons. First, advancement of the rule of law and access to justice are important goals in and of themselves. To reiterate something that Miguel said earlier in this conversation, freedom matters. And these are goals that are inherently valuable in and of themselves. Secondly, achieving goal 16.3 is crucial for the success of the 2030 agenda overall. We've discussed a lot of these linkages and just to re-emphasize the rule of law and access to justice are particularly relevant to development goals related to improving well-being, gender equity, social inclusion, and environmental preservation. Strengthening the rule of law and ensuring access to justice facilitates people's participation in society and is a way of ensuring that no one is left behind. There are three official indicators for goal 16.3 that have been adopted by the interagency and expert group on SDG indicators. These indicators, which you can see on the screen, offer pertinent insights into not only how people experience the justice system, but also how they perceive it. In addition to the three official indicators, the SDG 16 data initiative utilizes data from the World Justice Project's rule of law index to gain additional insights into the status of SDG 16.3. This data comes from two factors of the rule of law index. Factor seven on civil justice and factor eight on criminal justice. The rule of law index is developed using both household and expert surveys. Factor seven and eight complement three official indicators through the provision of additional information and insights about justice systems and progress towards goal 16. As discussed in the report, the global community is falling short of the aspirations of goal 16.3. In order to assess progress since the adoption of the 2030 agenda, I looked at data available in the SDG global database from 2015 and 2020, the most recent year for which data is available. Indicator 16.3.1 looks at police reporting rates for three types of violent crime, physical assault, robbery, and sexual assault. Crime reporting rates can offer insights into how people perceive the justice system, specifically how much they trust the system to support them in responding to these challenges. The data on crime reporting rates for physical assaults shows a mixed picture. To note, when we're talking about crime reporting rates, higher rates are better because they suggest that more crimes are being reported to the authorities. Lower crime reporting rates should not be interpreted to mean lower rates of crime, rather they may suggest that crimes that are happening are going unreported. Of the seven countries for which data is available for both 2015 and 2020, only two countries have seen improvements in the reporting rates, Colombia and Mexico. Similarly, the data on crime reporting rates for robberies suggest mixed progress. Three countries have demonstrated improvements, including in Colombia, where the crime reporting rate for robbery has increased by nearly 12 percentage points. However, an equal number of countries have experienced declines in this timeframe. Relatively little data is available on sexual assault reporting rates. In the global database, only two countries have reported data for both 2015 and 2020. In Iceland, the crime reporting rate more than doubled since the adoption of the 2030 agenda, but in Mexico, we've seen a slight decline. Data from 2019 on the right of the screen shows that the largest reporting rate is in the United States, where nearly 34 percent of sexual assaults were reported to the police. While this is notably larger than what we see in other countries for which data is available, it still indicates that two and three sexual assaults go unreported. Indicator 16.3.2, the second of the three indicators, is the proportion of unsentence detainees. Globally, this proportion has hovered around 30 percent since the beginning of the 21st century. Since the adoption of the 2030 agenda, it actually has worsened and increased by about 0.9 percentage points. Indicator 16.3.3 is the most recently adopted indicator for goal 16.3, and the SCG indicators database does not yet include any data for it. Here we can leverage data from the World Justice Project's rule of law index to offer additional insights. Factor 7 from the index shows that, similarly to the trends that we observe in the other indicators, there has not been much change with regard to civil justice around the world since the adoption of the 2030 agenda. The data on factor 8, criminal justice, paints a similar picture. Regional performance on factor 8 in the World Justice Project rule of law index has remained relatively stable. Data coverage, or lack thereof, is a significant impediment to understanding the current state of play for goal 16.3. Of the official indicators, the most data coverage available is on the rate of unsentenced detainees. However, only half of country's reported data in 2020. While no official data on indicator 16.3.3 is available yet in the indicators database, there is a new SDG 16 survey that's been developed by the UNDP, the UNODC, and OHCHR. This survey offers a really exciting opportunity for us to improve data collection on this indicator and other goal 16 targets. Additionally, I want to note that the World Justice Project rule of law index has continued to expand its coverage. 139 countries and jurisdictions were included in the 2021 index, which is the data that I used for this chapter. Additionally, the World Justice Project recently released in the past month, 2022 version of the rule of law index, and this most recent publication has been expanded to include 140 countries and jurisdictions. So with this, we see that while data coverage has been expanding in some regards, there's still a lot of room for continued improvement here. As we approach the halfway mark of the 2030 agenda, it is important to not only look back on the past few years, but also to look ahead to the future and seize upon the opportunities that we have for improvement. As the data shows, and as we've discussed, there's a need for concrete action. Last year, the WJP and Pathfinders published a report called Grasping the Justice Gap, which laid out three key data priorities for the justice community. These priorities remain relevant in the context of goal 16.3. The official SDG indicators can be complemented by unofficial data, such as that from the rule of law index. And this comes back to something Ivana mentioned about the need for nuance and data and getting more complete pictures of what's happening. Another example of diversifying data sources comes from Namati's research on gender justice, which utilized a participatory research approach. Additionally, research from Namati has further highlighted the importance of investing in and protecting justice service providers and actors, particularly those who are working at the grassroots level. Results from their legal empowerment network survey found that a lack of financing is a key challenge for grassroots justice service providers, and it's one that has worsened in recent years. In all, we see that there's a really clear opportunity for decisive action towards advancing access to justice and the rule of law. As the global community looks ahead to a new year, it is crucial that data is leveraged to inform and advance actions on justice for all. Thank you very much for your time, and thank you to my colleagues at the Data Initiative for having me. Please feel free to contact me with any questions, and I would encourage you to visit our website for more information about the World Justice Project. Thank you, Massimo. Thank you, Grace. So I would say key elements from what you said. We are falling short on the goal on access to justice and the rule of law, and data are important, and there is still poor data coverage, and we should improve on that as well. Well, I can't do justice to what you said in full, but this is already very, very interesting. Let me now ask Alex Hudson, my colleague from the Democracy Assessment Team at International Idea, how is progress ongoing on inclusive, accountable and democratic governance? Alex? Alex, we can see your presentation. I just had a moment of difficulty finding the mute button after I had shared my slides. Anyway, here we are. So thank you, Massimo, for your moderation, and it was a great privilege for me to write a chapter for this year's SDG 16-day Data Initiative Report. The analysis in my chapter sought to determine whether or not the adoption of the 2030 agenda could be understood to be a critical juncture, and more specifically, did the adoption of the 2030 agenda result in significant changes in country-level performance across four of the targets of SDG 16. So just to motivate that analysis, I think it's helpful to revisit for a second the UN General Assembly resolution that adopted the 2030 agenda for Sustainable Development in 2015. So in that resolution, Member States argued that the 17 Sustainable Development Goals would build on the Millennium Development Goals and complete what those did not achieve, and that they would seek to realize the human rights of all, to gender equality. And it made this argument that the goals are indivisible and balance three dimensions of sustainable development, economic, social, and environmental. And here's the critical part. The last sentence of that first section of the resolution makes a testable claim that the goals and targets will stimulate action over the next 15 years in areas of critical importance for humanity and the planet. And so I want to think for a moment, seven years in, how is it looking? And do we see evidence that the 2030 agenda represents a critical juncture for these vital areas of the human experience? And Ruth Collier and David Collier have defined a critical juncture as a period of significant change, which typically occurs in distinct ways in different countries, and which is hypothesized to produce distinct legacies. So if you were to find a critical juncture in an element such as access to justice that Grace just discussed, you should find that there is a distinctly different trajectory in that country's performance after that critical juncture occurs. So Fletcher already referenced the way that I invoked the Montreal Protocol but just as an illustration of what a critical juncture might look like, I've plotted here the trends in consumption of ozone depleting chemicals in 179 of the states that ratified the Montreal Protocol. And of course the year of ratification varies a bit, but I've centered it on zero. And you can see that 41 countries increased their consumption after ratification in the next six years. No significant change in 36 countries and reduced consumption 102. And as Fletcher already described, that's kind of an ideal situation to observe a critical juncture, but at least it gives us an illustration of what a really significant change that is motivated by an international agreement might look like. So I want to look at the four of the targets under SDG 16 using complementary indicators that we're going to propose from the global state of democracy indices, which is a data set produced by International Idea. The GSOD indices measure 28 aspects of democracy and human rights. They're composite measures based on 14 source data sets and they cover as of version six published in 2022, 173 countries in 47 years and they're updated annually. And they have a arrangement of indicators that look something like this. And I've included the URL there, so I don't take time going through all the attributes and sub attributes, but I invite you to look at the data if you want to understand more about the measurement. So this one was already discussed a moment ago in Grace's presentation, but I'll revisit it SDG 16.3, which is a target that says we should promote the rule of law at the national and international levels and ensure equal access to justice for all. And so in the GSOD indices, we have an indicator we call predictable enforcement. That is a reasonable proxy in this case for promotion of the rule of law. And you can see centering the data on 2015, which is of course the year that the 2030 agenda was adopted. We have a negative trend in 21 countries, no significant change in 140 and a positive trend in only 12. Another aspect of target 16.3 is access to justice and we have an indicator for that. And here we find a negative trend in 24 countries, no change in 129 and a positive trend in only 20. Another important target here is SDG 16.5 to substantially reduce corruption and bribery in all their forms. And here the picture is a little bit different. So we have a negative trend in 17 countries, no significant change in 130, but we have a positive trend in 26. So this looks at least somewhat hopeful. I can tell you that at a globally aggregated level, the average for this indicator is basically unchanged in the last 15 years, but at least we know that there are some countries making significant progress. We also know of course that corruption is related to GDP per capita and you can see that pretty clearly here. And so I've split the countries up slightly further here so that we can see how the trend looks for different World Bank income levels. And here it's immediately obvious that most of the progress has come in countries that actually have fairly high levels of corruption and low levels of income, but we have about seven countries in that category that have made significant progress. And it's sort of a mixed picture through the other income categories, but this does suggest that efforts to invest in counter-corruption measures in some contexts have been successful. SDG 16.6 is to develop effective, accountable, and transparent institutions at all levels. And we have an indicator in the GSOD indices for effective parliament. And here we can see that the trend is quite negative. So 31 countries have significantly declined in their performance of effective parliament, 130 with no change and 12 with a positive trend. 16.7 ensure effective, responsive, inclusive, participatory, and representative decision making at all levels. And here we have a few indicators that can be brought to bear. One is civil society participation. And this is an indicator that changes very little in most countries. And you can see that it's negative for six, no change for 163 and positive for four. Also gender equality. Again, an indicator that changes very slowly in most contexts, but you can see the sharp decline for one country and more shallow declines for four others, no change in 162 and a positive trend for six countries. And then we have this very broad measure of actually representative government, which is sort of the representative democracy measure. And you find here a negative trend for 15 countries, no change for 154 and a positive trend for only four countries. So in the summary, I would argue that there's no evidence at this point that the adoption of the sustainable development goals in the 2030 agenda in 2015 represented a critical juncture. And that consequently, we are not on track to meet these targets under SDG 16 by 2030. Of course, there are more ways to dig into the data in a more detailed way, but that's sort of what I have time for now. So thanks very much. Thank you, Alex. Quite interesting and to the point. So some mixed picture on access to justice, some positive trends on corruption, transparent institutions, negative trends, and the 2015 adoption of the 2030 agenda was not a critical juncture if we have to judge the situation as it is now. But we still have another seven to eight years, so let's not lose hope. And let me turn now to Gergely Edeg from the Small Arms Survey. And Gergely, are we on track to significantly reducing lethal violence? Over to you. Yes, Gergely, I think we can't hear you, but we can see your presentation. Thank you. Yeah, I had the same problem. I don't know where is the mute button when I'm sharing my screen. So thanks so much for the introduction again. I'm representing the Small Arms Survey, but also my dear colleagues, Jean-Luc Cabot, and then seven in favor, who were my co-authors of the chapter of which I'm about to give you a couple of snapshots, but I recommend everyone to read it because it has lots of information and we have very little time now to summarize what's in it. Let's start with stating that in 2020, so two years ago, this is when our Small Arms Survey's Global Violence dataset updating was taken place last time, there was over half a million violent deaths in the globe. So it means that one out of about every 112 global deaths are due to violence, which is less than 1%, but it's a highly preventable 1% and therefore it definitely deserves attention. So this number here is a composite of mainly two components, intentional homicides and conflict deaths, which are indicators for goals or target 16.1, which is reduction of violence, significantly reduced violence in the world, and also includes most the estimates of additional types of violent deaths, which are unintentional homicides or killings in legal interventions, legal executions and such. But we are focusing now on the indicators, which are covered by the SDG framework, then of course the most important one is intentional homicides and 16.1.1 focuses on the homicide rates and it looks for a significant reduction of homicide rates over time. I don't know if my arrow is visible or cursor is visible or not, can you tell me? Yes, it is. Oh, fantastic. So then I can show you around. So here on these charts that I marked the year 2016, which would have been the first year for any policy that has been adopted on the basis of agenda 2030 to take effect. So we are not comparing with 2015 but with 2016 and that kind of gives a difference if you look at these lines that it's a more favorable comparison. In terms of absolute numbers, we have a 13% decline of intentional homicides globally and it translates into a 16% decline in homicide rates, which is because the same number of homicides will become a lower homicide rate with an increased population size. Therefore, those decreases are a bit more sharp. But if we are looking at the trend line, it kind of shows a fairly monotonous declining trend with a slight acceleration after 2016, which may or may not be related to any policies adopted on the basis of 2030 agenda, but at least there is a chance for that. The other big component is conflict deaths. So the indicator itself, 16.1.2 is conflict deaths, including direct and indirect deaths as well. For indirect deaths, the measurement is basically totally missing. So what we have now globally is an assessment of direct conflict deaths, which means that those fatalities which are resulting directly from armed actions or gun related injuries or injuries from explosives and such. And there we see on one hand a very impressive decline compared to 2016. But like Alex was saying that there was a high backslide or a very strong backsliding in democracy since 2012. There was also a high increase in conflict lethality or number of fatalities after 2012 and 13, peaking in 2016, compared to which now we are down by 50%, which is a great achievement. But that 1.33 per 100,000 violent death resulted by conflict is still about twice as high compared to the period before 2012 and 2013. It is an important aspect that is especially important in lethal violence is the agenda aspect. Of course, most of the victims of violence are men. About a quarter of violent victims are, sorry, about one in five or less. It's 17% of the victims were women in 2020. But it's important to see that it's a record low, the 2.3 per 100,000 victims of violence is again a record low number and resulting of a decrease for five consecutive years since 2016. So all these lines seem very nice and we could be optimistic that we are on track towards a significant reduction of lethal violence. But there are a few caveats that just as we see with Grace that before, even for these two indicators, the 16.1, 0.1 and 2, which are relatively major indicators, many countries are reporting, but a lot of the numbers are missing and a lot of the disaggregations are missing, which is equally important or almost equally important. This is because of non-reported countries not reporting. There is probably also cases of data suppression. So countries are not reporting because they don't like what they should have to report or they are probably masking some of those numbers. There are, of course, undocumented deaths in violent context, especially in conflict, but also otherwise. In this year's event, the Russian-Ukrainian war is going to be a big game changer in terms of how conflict deaths trend line is looking. Now we are towards 80,000 fatalities this year, of which at least half will be represented in data sets. There is always another reporting of these numbers, but anyway it is going to be a big game changer in how the progress will look like after this year. Then there are many emerging conflicts or re-emerging conflicts which could kick in and could totally change the landscape that I'm pointing here in the last two points. I'm yielding back. These are some of the highlights and I'm ready to take questions later. Thank you very much, Gergelli. Well, data shows some positive trends, but perhaps they are not all rosy. There is a lot of dark matter, as you highlighted. Data are missing. There is data suppression. Data desegregation is also lacking and there is a big factor of the war in Ukraine, which is still unreported because the data cover only up until 2021. Thank you, Gergelli. Let me now ask Tobi. Tobi, you have the opportunity to provide some views based on your chapter. What is your assessment of the situation? Tobi Mendel, sorry. Tobi Mendel, Executive Director Center for Law and Democracy. Tobi. Thank you. It's my unhappy task to provide an overview of progress across all of the targets reviewed and I say unhappy tasks. Usually I like reporting and like to present this wonderful work that's being done by civil society, but I say unhappy because, as I think the presentations so far have already made clear, the progress is really dire. And I just want to note, of course, our results are based on civil society non-official data. And sometimes people may have the impression that civil society, and of course I remember of civil society, but civil society is always painting a negative picture and no matter what's happening, it's always doom and gloom from the side of civil society. And I confess that even myself have sometimes been critical of civil society for doing that. In the 1990s and early 2000s, human rights organizations kept talking about our things were getting worse and worse, but the whole of Eastern Europe had been moved away from repressive communist states and things like that. But this time, the civil society predictions really are correct, really are very reliable. And of course the data that is reflected in this report is all very, very scientifically produced and very methodologically sound. And I think that we can see this time at least a high correlation between the kinds of statements that are being made by civil society and the kinds of statements that are being made by other observers, including official observers like UN actors. And so, I mean, it's not just civil society saying these things. I would like to review a few background points. I'm not going to, I mean, I think everyone has presented their data, presented the trends in each chapter. I'm not going to repeat that, of course. I do want to talk about some of the special features of assessing progress in the SDG-16 space. And the first is that, I mean, the UN goal here is that we should make substantial progress by 2030. That's already a fairly vague, probably deliberately vague standard. But it's particularly unclear in the SDG-16 space. We can debate whether it should be, Ivan has said that if we look at the number of countries that have adopted laws, if the gap is reduced by 50% or 75%, we can look at numerical things. But for example, what does substantial progress in terms of reducing corruption, in advancing the rule of law, in advancing implementation of access to information laws, I mean, what does that look like? And I think that in a lot of development areas, we can sensibly reduce progress to reasonably linear numerical assessments. And of course, we need to do that even in the area of SDG-16 because we need to have things that we can measure. But I'm not sure how much that really tells us about progress. So I think that's one of the first real challenges here. Secondly, I would highlight the sensitivity of SDG-16 targets to the political regime of the day. Of course, different governments, and I'm talking about all kinds of governments around the world, whatever their stripe and orientation may be, will have different priorities from a development point of view. But there's broad consensus on moving forward on a lot of the SDG areas. Everyone agrees that education is good, that increasing health care and reducing the impact negative impacts of health care and things like that. But that does not hold true in the same way for the SDG-16 targets, even though probably many governments would not go on record as opposing them. But in fact, many governments actively oppose the achievement of those goals. For example, quite a few governments around the world simply do not want to make decision-making more responsive, more participatory, and so on. So I mean, I think we can see that sort of the political regime of the day, the achievement of these goals much more sensitive to that. And I would say closely related to that is that progress on many of the SDG-16, sorry, many of the SDGs in general, outside of, I would say, crisis situations, is largely unidirectional in a positive sense. Of course, that doesn't apply across the board, but by and large, the world is advancing on education, on health care, on addressing poverty, even on discrimination and the environment. Obviously, not quickly enough on the environment, but we're better today than we were 10 years ago and better than 20 years ago again. But the SDG-16 targets are much more volatile. Progress is not at all in here and not at all unidirectional when it comes to them. In fact, countries can bounce up and down as I made clear in my original comments, very substantially on those targets. So we can sort of make some slow progress and then roll backward quickly again to use the example of Myanmar. Myanmar was a country in transition towards democracy. It had made some important steps forward and then essentially fell off a cliff and it's now arguably worse than it was before the democratic transition started in 2010 or 2008 or 2012, wherever you peg it at. So I think that that's a significant difference between the SDG-16 targets and others. The fourth point I would make is that some of the SDG targets are just very tough. For example, even when countries are genuinely committed to reducing corruption, that's not an easy thing to do, especially in countries where corruption is rooted. We've seen numerous examples of countries which have put in place, done sort of what they're expected to do, done the right thing in terms of adjusting corruption, but still the problem remains persistently there. A fifth point I would make is that there were a number of new and innovative elements in the SDGs, but the whole of the SDG-16 package is really new and really innovative. Of course, as a human rights activist, I am utterly delighted that it was included and it's no coincidence that it's a 16 of 16, it's 16th of the 16 substantive goals within the SDGs agreed at the very end, but it was agreed, but the consequence of that means that in many cases, we have sort of run the catch up in terms of putting in place methodologies to assess progress in the areas that it measures. We've been assessing infant mortality and educational levels and these sorts of things for a very, very long time. Implementation of access to information laws, some of these other areas are very new for us and we had to kind of run along and develop methodologies as these indicators were agreed very late on. In some cases, the methodologies for these have only solidified very, very recently, meaning that we essentially have a very limited range of comparative data. Six and relatedly, and I'll speed up a little bit here, several of the indicators that we find in the SDG-16 space are very surrogate in the sense that there's a big gap between what the indicators measure and what the target actually aims at. Just to give an example, we have killing of journalists and human rights defenders as a measurement for fundamental freedoms. I think the gap between those two things is pretty obvious, or we have victims who report violent crimes as a measurement for the rule of law. There's a large blue water between those two things. And then, final point I will make in a preliminary sense, and then a couple of wrapping up comments. I mean, we need, for all of the indicators, but certainly for the SDG-16 ones, targets, we need to look beyond the overall progress in terms of where we're going and look at variations, for example, in terms of gender and other marginalized groups. A key goal of the SDGs is to leave no one behind. That was described by the UN as the central transformative promise of Agenda 2030. So if we have overall declines, but women are not experiencing or benefiting from those, we are not achieving the SDGs. And I mean, Gergely mentioned in terms of deaths, the differences of, for example, gender differences. Again, in terms of killing of journalists, far more men, male journalists get killed than female journalists. But for example, female journalists are massively subjected to online harassment and attacks to the point where you have to be really brave to be a female journalist at all these days. So I'm not going to go into details about where we are and the different things. I think other people covered that. But apart from in the one area of violent deaths with the caveats that have already been mentioned about that, that it doesn't take into account the Russian invasion of Ukraine, basically on all of the rest of the targets that we have assessed in this report, we see stagnation or very limited progress, or sometimes even backsliding. So I think it's absolutely clear across the issues that we're looking at here that we are not halfway to substantial progress. Somehow, and I don't know how, but somehow the world needs to address this problem. We will not achieve the SDGs without SDG 16, and we are not on track to achieve SDG 16. Thank you, Toby. Since we are approaching the end of the time allocated, I'd like to ask John, who has to leave otherwise, if he's still online, if he wants to give us just a speech very quickly on what can we do to achieve then SDG 16 by 2030? John? Yeah, just very briefly. That's a big, big question for us here collectively. But I mean, I'll be very, very brief, just some reflections on what's already been discussed and maybe looking towards the future. I think one thing is clear from this discussion in the many years of work from many of these colleagues around the data that they're producing is that governments need to include non-official data sources in their own reporting. There needs to be better collaboration and cross-fertilization. I mean, right now, especially in the times that we're in right now, we need to paint as accurate and robust of a picture as we possibly can to tell us where we are. I mean, generally, anecdotally, we know as has been said before, we know the progress is not good. But I think showing where that progress is particularly lacking and showing it in real terms, again, exploring those interlinkages a bit more, I think needs to come to the forefront and governments, donors need to support non-official data in a much more coordinated and robust way. And I think one final, final point is related to, you know, how do we, well, maybe even a question about how do we use data sources like these to not just address the current challenges and look back retrospectively, but how do we use these insights and analytics to also try and anticipate the next challenges and the next global crises? I mean, I think looking back on 2015, if we had negotiated or if governments had negotiated the SDGs now as opposed to in 2015, I think the SDGs would be dramatically different from what we had from 2015. So kind of an open question about how do we use this data to look into the future a little bit more and project where those next global crises may happen and again, exploring those interlinkages between the lack of investment and action on SDG 16 and what are the negative externalities of that and what is the impact potentially in the future so that we can try and anticipate and get ahead of future global crises to the point where hopefully we work to help prevent some of those things in the future. So I think, again, just need to be conscious of how do we use this data a bit more effectively? Storytelling, policymaking, anticipating challenges going forward, because again, we're halfway to 2030, but not even close, as Toby said, not even halfway to implementing the SDGs and SDGs 16. So maybe just some open questions for further exploration. Thank you, John. Thank you very much. I know you're about to go. Let's take another couple of minutes to at least try to address some of the questions posed in the chat that I have in front of me. Adam, Carol, made actually several questions, but all of them may be boiled down to the issue of implementation of SDG 16 ideas. And how can we make governments accountable for honing the promises that they made in the 2030 agenda on these important area? John Caganga also highlighted the need for the grassroots implementation and the importance of financing, which is still a big problem, especially for civil society actors on the ground. And Arilis Bellorini raised an issue about the key messaging. In fact, there is a mixed picture, as we saw. I would say that John captured well the elements of progress and also the worries related to some of the clients and backsliding also highlighted by Tony in his wrap up and colleagues in the various chapters. So who was to answer to some of these points made? The floor is open to any other panelist before we wrap up. I can just say something quickly. Yes, Miguel, Lara, Otaola from International Idea. Miguel. Thank you, Massimo. I think one problem because there's many of implementation for this is that currently the UN is only relying on official statistics provided by the countries to track and monitor not only SDG 16, but also other SDGs. And these are clearly not sufficient. And this is one of the things, as I mentioned there in the chat, one of the virtues of the SDG 16 data initiative is that we advocate for using other data that is also very robust, very reliable, combining different sources on rule of law or on democracy or on conflict that can help us get a better picture of the challenges and what we need to do more specifically. I always say that one of the targets of SDG 16 has to do with the rule of law. But the indicators that are used currently only focus on violent deaths. Of course, that is a part of the rule of law, but we also have to think about the due process on having access to justice, impartial tribunals, etc., the sort of data that the World Justice Project or IDEA has. And I think that is a first step advocating for this so we can accurately measure and accurately track progress. Thank you. Thank you very much, Miguel. I think we have reached the now six minutes past our set time for completing this conversation. And I will just give you my key takeaways from these interesting exchange. I would say that the first one is the importance of data, as many of you indicated, meet the way to the implementation and the achievement of the 2030 agenda. We see more and more how important the non-official data are. And the second key takeaway that I take from these is that the quality of these data, their disaggregation, the combination of different sources should really be at the core of a data analysis agenda that should guide implementation. My third and final key takeaways is that data should not only be useful in order to monitor progress, but should also be useful and used by key stakeholders for defining choices for the implementation of the 2030 agenda. We'll come back with more on these in the next months, as some of you mentioned. Next year there will be the SDG16 summit and we feel that this endeavor is critical for making available analysis and data to policy makers. There is Tobi who wants to quickly respond. Please, Tobi, just one sentence. Go ahead. I just wanted to comment on Miguel's point in the chat about how can we create the political conditions. And I mean, I am increasingly believing that we need to go back to grassroots democracy. I think that in the current era of misinformation and confusion and whatever, even democracies have a little bit lost the way and we need to go back to the grassroots and we need to hold our governments to account in fairly basic democratic ways and make them and increase the political costs of them not advancing things like the SDGs, which are basically what everyone wants. And governments should deliver that. So I think we need to get back to our democratic roots in those countries, at least where that's possible. Absolutely. So the importance of democratic institutions and processes in this respect for the long haul and achieving the goals is very key, I would say. Thank you very much to all the panelists. My special thanks to Amanda Surek who supported us aptly during this process and to my colleagues from the IT, in particular those based in Stockholm who actually made this possible. Many thanks to all the participants and looking forward to seeing you again probably on the margins of the high level political forum in July for our next chat on this data initiative. Looking forward to seeing you there and thank you for having participated. Goodbye. Thank you. Thank you Masimo. Goodbye.