Working Papers

It would be hard to fathom any Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) being achieved without either adequate human and financial resources and partnerships or institutions that are effective, inclusive and accountable. One would expect, therefore, that two of the most cross-cutting SDGs of the 2030 Agenda, SDG16 on Peace, justice and strong institutions and SDG17 on the Means of implementation and partnerships for development would receive ample attention in scholarly work and policy analysis. A quick overview of the literature reveals, however, that although SDG16 and SDG17 are examined quite extensively in and of themselves, linkages between the two seldom receive attention.

This…

The humanitarian-development divide has long been a contentious debate in both academia and government. Despite the recent surge in the cost, frequency, duration and severity of humanitarian crises, humanitarian and development disciplines and communities of practice have continued to operate in silos. This article aims to bridge the humanitarian-development divide by interlinking the Agenda for Humanity and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The newly proposed context-conflict-contingency model of humanitarian-development connections constitutes the conceptual foundation, which is then tested by the findings of the network analysis of the 169 SDG targets of the 2030 Agenda and…

This paper examines the involvement of supreme audit institutions (SAIs) in auditing the preparedness of governments for implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) since 2015. These audits have covered institutional arrangements put in place to implement the SDGs, the mobilization of resources, and monitoring and evaluation frameworks. SDG preparedness audits have produced valuable information that is not necessarily available from other national processes linked with SDG follow-up and review. As such, audit recommendations can be a powerful tool to help governments improve SDG implementation. The paper reflects on the impact that SDG audits have made, and on the challenges…