Highlight 18/2026: Is SDG 16 Both the Goal and the Gap? Security Sector Governance and the Limits of What Can Be Measured
María Paula Vásquez, 8 June 2026
Goal 16 (SDG 16), which aims for peaceful, just and inclusive societies, access to justice for all and effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels is recognized as both an outcome of development and the basis or institutional foundation for all other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
SDG 16 has a very rare structural position within the 2030 Agenda. In contrast to the goals that are aimed at achieving specific developmental impacts (i.e., health; education; food poverty, etc.), SDG 16 is both a goal to achieve and an enablement for achieving all the goals stated in the 2030 Agenda. According to the Conference on SDG-16 (2019), peace and good governance are more than just goals, they are actually “catalysts to achieving many other goals” and therefore are structurally foundational to all goals within the 2030 Agenda. In addition, the means (effective, accountable institutions) through which all other 16 goals can be achieved are through accountability and integrity within the security sector.
The security sector has a unique role to play in this structural perspective. Security institutions (the armed forces, police and intelligence services as well as the government agencies that oversee them) are among the most powerful institutions within any state. When such institutions are governed by democratic processes and operate within the confines of the law, they provide critical support to the type of stability envisioned by SDG 16. When these institutions do not operate democratically and within the confines of the law, they become major sources of violence, impunity and exclusion that SDG 16 seeks to eliminate.
There is a very clear relationship between the Security Sector Governance/Reform (SSG/R) and the specific targets of SDG 16. According to the Geneva Center for Security Governance (DCAF) (2021) good governance of the security sector is vital to achieving three specific targets of SDG 16; the creation of effective and accountable institutions (16.6), the reduction of corruption and bribery (16.5) and equal access to justice (16.3).
By adding on the dimension of human security, Dursun-Özkanca (2021) argues that the emphasis that SSG/R provides on accountability, oversight and local ownership forms the strongest link that bridges the broader goals of SDG 16 in relation to inclusive participation (16.7) and the reduction of violence (16.1).
A significant challenge for SSG/R-SDG 16 is the difficulty of measuring progress despite alignment. Measurement of progress against the SDG 16 Indicators assumes that there are available data systems on state function (such as civil registries, judicial statistics and reliable crime reporting) in a SSR context. The challenge is operationalizing the methodologies into tools that can help countries collect data and overcome the multiple obstacles that they may face at the country level; from political will to financial and technical resources.
Dursun-Özkanca (2021) states that « SSR has (primarily) focused on security dividends. However, development dividends are approximated. » Therefore, the major contributions to SSG/R (increased trust between people and security institutions, perceived safety, legitimacy of oversight, etc.) are inherently qualitative in nature, and would not easily lend themselves to global indicator frameworks for measurement.
The measurement gap between the availability of quantitative indicators in security sector reform environments is not simply a technical issue; it is a governance issue by itself. To the extent that SSG/R cannot be accurately measured, the issue of accountability for impact against the 2030 Agenda’s normative standards (to affected communities, oversight agencies or the 2030 Agenda itself) is structurally compromised. Addressing this measurement gap requires investment in both qualitative and locally based entry point approaches and sources of measurement, to ensure that progress against governance is appropriately captured where quantitative indicators do not exist.
María Paula Vásquez, Highlight 18/2026: Is SDG 16 Both the Goal and the Gap? Security Sector Governance and the Limits of What Can Be Measured, 8 June 2026, available at www.meig.ch
The views expressed in the MEIG Highlights are personal to the authors and neither reflect the positions of the MEIG Programme nor those of the University of Geneva