.jpg)
A critical reading of the Syrian governments report: “Second Voluntary National Review on the Sustainable Development Goals 2023”
A critical reading of the Syrian governments report: “Second Voluntary National Review on the Sustainable Development Goals 2023”
Detachment from reality and ignoring the conflict's foundation
Member states of the United Nations adopted the Sustainable Development Goals for 2015. Since then, these countries have been assessing and reviewing the goals they have achieved by engaging stakeholders, including government agencies, civil society organizations, academia, and the private sector. National reports summarize the country's efforts, policies and initiatives related to the sustainable development goals. It highlights achievements, challenges, best practices, and lessons learned. Voluntary national review reports often include data, studies and examples of projects or policies implemented to advance sustainable development goals.
The Syrian Center for Policy Research, in cooperation with the Network of Arab Non-Governmental Organizations for Development and several Syrian civil society organizations, prepared an independent alternative report on the extent of achieving the sustainable development goals in Syria in light of the current conflict. Accordingly, a development dialogue forum was held on sustainable development goals (two sessions), discussing the highlights of the 2023 government report, and the topics that should be focused on in the alternative report. Accordingly, this report was prepared to provide an overview of the development situation in Syria.
The following are the most prominent findings of the report:
Using the Sustainable Development Goals methodology to measure and diagnose conflict-related deterioration is a deficient tool due to this methodology’s focus on quantitative indicators without diagnosing the dynamics and policies that achieve or hinder the goals. It also neutralizes many structural aspects in the analysis, such as issues of political tyranny, the systematic use of violence, and regional and international relations of domination and exploitation. In addition to the absence of social and cultural aspects such as values and social networks. It also lacks mechanisms that impose mandatory implementation and hold governments and key actors accountable.
The government review is largely divorced from reality. In terms of development outcomes, it is assumed that it will achieve health and education goals by 2030, and it focuses on some development imbalances and ignores that the country is suffering from development collapse in various fields as a result of the ongoing conflict.
- As for the political, social and economic actors and systems and their functions and role in the conflict, it is noted that the government review neglected the dimensions of the conflict and the roles of the Syrian government, non-state forces, and civil forces in it. Rather, he attributes the causes of the collapse to external factors linked to sanctions or external forces opposing him.
- Syria's development path during the conflict indicates the loss of more than five decades of development, and these losses are embodied in the various aspects of development politically, socially, economically and environmentally. This report provided some evidence of this ongoing major collapse in light of the conflict. Compared with the government review, which suffers from systematic deficiencies in measurement and bias in the selection of evidence or its spatial and temporal scope.
Continuing with current policies not only confirms the impossibility of achieving the 2030 sustainable development goals, but also reinforces the elements of conflict and collapse and leads to a reverse path of development.
Objective diagnosis of the outcomes and dynamics of development is a key step for developing the path to overcoming conflict with broad community participation, in a way that contributes to confronting the components of conflict and investing in development engines based on justice, sustainability, peace and prosperity. This cannot be done without mobilizing efforts towards a just and sustainable political solution.
Please click here to download the full report
Recent publications
