OWG Proposed Target 16.1
RATING: UNCERTAIN but the potential benefits are very high – the focus should be on violence since it is much more prevalent than violence related death (homicide). For example up to 16% of children are punished by very violent methods and up to 30% of all partnered women experience inter-personal violence in their lifetime. While eliminating some small fraction of this violence would have very large absolute benefits, there is limited evidence for interventions that could successfully reduce violence – and most of these studies come from high-income countries. Fearon and Hoeffler (2014).
Setting the Right Global Goals
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You can read about our prioritization project, setting smart, cost-effective goals in this op-ed published around the world including Turkey, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Uganda, South Korea, Costa Rica and the Philippines.
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In our recent report, not just the target above, but all 169 targets have been assessed by 60 teams of the world’s top economists. The targets have been categorized into five ratings based on evidence of economic, social, and environmental costs and benefits. While we applaud that the UN Open Working Group's final outcome document contains 43 fewer targets than the previous document, we are concerned that many targets have simply been combined, therefore reducing the number of both phenomenal and poor targets assessed according to our cost-benefit analysis. Our new assessment includes suggestions for how these can be improved as reported in this article by the Financial Times.