32 civil society organisations join forces to demand government progress on modern slavery

In 2015, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In doing so, member states signalled their commitment to collectively address global challenges in order to achieve peace and prosperity for all by 2030. There are no “easy” SDGs and achieving them requires that, as a global community, we aggressively pursue their implementation and monitor our progress.

“Without evidence of where we stand now, we cannot confidently chart our path forward in realizing the Sustainable Development Goals” — António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations

The UN measures progress towards the SDGs with a global framework of indicators and Voluntary National Reviews, where governments report on their own activities against these indicators.

For SDG 8.7, this approach is hampered by a lack of indicators on all forms of modern slavery under SDG 8.7. Currently, there is only one indicator for child labour – the proportion and number of children aged 5 to 17 years engaged in child labour by sex and age – and none for all forms of modern slavery. These indicators are reviewed annually- the next review is in March 2020.

Without clear indicators to measure progress toward the 2030 goal, governments cannot report systematically and consistently, nor can they be held to account.

33 civil society organisations are calling for:

The UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery also supports the need for indicators under SDG 8.7.