Accountability

The principle of accountability requires all the countries of the world to report on their efforts and progress in achieving the SDGs at national, regional and global levels. This is because the measures to implement the 2030 Agenda and their impacts will not be successful unless they are verifiable and transparent. A country’s voluntary reports on its progress in achieving the goals, known as voluntary national reviews (VNRs), are presented to the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF), which convenes annually in New York. These reports are a ‘soft’ mechanism with which the countries of the United Nations can ensure their accountability and monitor their progress towards achieving the SDGs. Every country decides for itself when to submit reports at the global level. Beyond that, an increasing number of national SDG reviews are also being conducted. They render account to the public in the respective country, and often to its parliament too.

High-quality, up-to-date data at national level is required to measure progress made in achieving these goals. A total of 231 indicators are used to gauge the extent to which the 17 goals and 169 targets are being achieved. These indicators are administered at global level by the United Nations Statistics Division. Collecting and evaluating the relevant data and making it publicly available at a high quality represents a challenge for many UN member states. Moreover, reporting on efforts to achieve the SDGs is very demanding, as communication and consultation processes must be coordinated between the relevant government units and the non-governmental actors. Given these complex requirements, many countries are interested in sharing experiences.

This was the starting point for the Partners for Review network, which worked until June 2022 to support exchanges between countries regarding their 2030 Agenda reporting processes, bringing together experts from governments and parliaments and from civil society, academia, business and other stakeholder groups. Coordinated by GIZ on behalf of BMZ and the Federal Environment Ministry (BMUV), the project used collective learning and dialogue to address the challenges surrounding reporting on the SDGs. More than 800 participants from 99 countries took part in the network meetings and various other events, where they shared their experiences.