Chapter 6: Spotlight Reports

At the heart of Agenda 2030 is accountability – that governments have made commitments to improve the lives of their people and are following those commitments with actions to achieve them. To help stakeholders (including civil society) and communities measure how governments are progressing, Agenda 2030 set up a system of Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) which encourages each country – and increasingly, sub-national bodies – to report on their activities and progress towards achieving the SDGs. These reports are presented to the UN at the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) where each government has the opportunity to provide a concise overview of the reports’ key findings before engaging in a focused deliberation on them. Regarding the drafting of this report, all but a handful of governments around the world have submitted reports and presented them at the HLPF.¹

One significant problem with the official VNR reports is the lack of reporting on SDG16+ issues. Many reports do not address SDG16+ at all. Most that do, only cover a small number of the targets, or at best, provide superficial analysis. Controversial issues, such as the attacks and murders of journalists and human rights defenders (16.10), are almost never mentioned. Often, civil society is only tangentially included in the development of these reports, meaning that the emphasis is on governments presenting themselves in a good light and highlighting their achievements, rather than reviewing problems, failures or ways to improve implementation.

To address these missing elements, civil society organisations of all sizes (at the national and international level) have been producing their own alternative ‘spotlight’ reports. These reports highlight information absent in the official national reports and offer recommendations on improvement. Spotlight reports, also known as ‘shadow’ or ‘parallel’ reports, are a tradition within civil society groups dating back decades at the United Nations Human Rights Council, the Human Rights Committee, and many other UN bodies which have reporting mechanisms. In some of the mechanisms, the reports have been formally included in the system by UN bodies and are taken into account by member states and UN bodies in the discussions. Even if they are not formally included, the reports are an important source for bodies, Member States, donors, and civil society on the problems and successes of implementation.

To date, hundreds of spotlight reports have been produced by civil society.² Some take a global overview, reviewing and commenting on progress across the SDGs, including SDG16. Others take a more thematic or regional approach, looking at progress on particular targets or issues, complimenting and critiquing official reports from UN bodies. Most commonly, national and local NGOs produce their own country reports. These reports are too numerous and varied to summarise in this report.

At the global level, a number of organisations produce SDG-related surveys with information and data on SDG16. These have generally found little progress on SDG16:

• Action for Sustainable Development has supported national groups in dozens of countries which are conducting VNRs each year with spotlight reports. These reports are synthesised into the People’s Scorecard reports. A key area of study is ‘inclusive governance’ which includes public awareness, transparency and accountability, and citizen participation and civil society engagement. The 2022 synthesis report found that “when participation spaces for non-state actors are available, these tend to be merely informative or consultative in nature, involve a degree of selection regarding which organisations can take part in them, and usually lack a proper connection to the policymaking process… none of the countries that conducted a Scorecard and Spotlight report this year has put in place substantial spaces for stakeholder engagement”.³ The global average for 2022 for SDG16 was only 9 per cent, rating as extremely low in implementation.

• The Sustainable Development Solutions Network monitors progress in all 193 UN Member States using a mix of official and unofficial data. For SDG16, using nine indicators, they have found little progress globally since 2010,⁴ and also that major challenges remain in nearly all countries.⁵ SDG16 is stagnating for low-income and lower-middle income countries, while moderately increasing for upper-middle-income countries and high-income countries.⁶ Only Japan and Iceland are found to have achieved SDG16 with another nine countries on track.

• The annual Spotlight on Sustainable Development report brings together eight CSOs and additional contributors from across the world examining major global issues affecting SDG implementation, including: corruption, illicit financial flows, gender inequality, and public participation.⁷ It also includes spotlight reports from dozens of countries.