In December, the Biden Administration closed out 2021 by sounding an alarm: Democracy is under threat around the world. If the world does not work to defend it, the president warned at his first Summit for Democracy, we will not be able to rise to the unprecedented challenges of our time.

Joe Biden is not the only one who feels that way. There is growing consensus among global leaders who are working toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that if we, as a global community, do not invest in SDG 16 – peace, justice and strong institutions – we risk conflict and sliding back on all of the other goals.

On the first day of Global Washington’s Goalmakers 2021 conference, on December 8, leaders from our community gathered online to discuss this very issue.

“When the system itself is unjust or unequal, you cannot maintain your precious development gains – you almost always plant the seeds for greater conflict [or] renewed violence,” Nancy Lindborg, President and CEO of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, said in a panel discussion.

Laura Chinchilla, Costa Rica’s first woman president, agreed: “The purpose is not to build institutions for the sake of them. On the contrary, we are guided by higher principles and goals to which those institutions are meant to serve. This is why I consider SDG 16 the moral backbone of the 2030 agenda.”

SDG 16 is summed up as “peace, justice and strong institutions,” but the panelists warned about the pitfalls of this “bumper sticker” abbreviation.

“[Strong institutions] is a phrase that is open to misunderstanding and misuse,” said Betsy Anderson, executive director of the World Justice Project. “Institutions that are powerful, even authoritarian…, could be characterized as strong, and, of course, that’s not what we contemplate in SDG 16.”

Read the full article about investing in SDG 16 by Joanne Lu at Global Washington.