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Kristina Jönsson

Kristina Jönsson

Head of Department | Associate Professor | Senior Lecturer

Kristina Jönsson

Responsibility and the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals

Author

  • Magdalena Bexell
  • Kristina Jönsson

Summary, in English

This article asks what key concerns emerge from the way responsibility is framed in United Nations summit documents on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted in 2015. Our conceptual framework serves to make the study of SDG responsibility more systematic by distinguishing three main senses of responsibility: cause, obligation, and accountability. The framework structures our analysis of two SDG summit documents, Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda. The article shows, first, that the causal sense of responsibility is hidden between the lines in paragraphs on poverty, debt and environmental issues. As a consequence, root causes of problems might not be appropriately addressed. Second, SDG summit documents deal predominantly with responsibility in the sense of obligation. We raise concerns with repeated consideration for national circumstances and with vague obligations for non-governmental actors. Third, with regard to accountability, we stress that quantitative indicators have unintended steering effects both before and beyond the review phase. The focus on indicators risks shadowing broader obligations, such as international human rights. In all its three senses, responsibility in key SDG documents remains state-centric with great room for state sovereignty, self-regulation and respect for national circumstances. Our framework is useful also in showing that the three senses of responsibility build on each other and that engagement with responsibility provides fruitful ground for further research.

Department/s

  • Department of Political Science

Publishing year

2017-01-02

Language

English

Pages

13-29

Publication/Series

Forum for Development Studies

Volume

44

Issue

1

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Topic

  • Political Science

Keywords

  • Responsibility.
  • sustainable development
  • United Nations
  • accountability
  • Sustainable Development Goals

Status

Published

Project

  • Realising the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals: Whose responsibility?
  • Lund Human Rights Research Hub

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0803-9410