Information Integrity and the Sustainable Development Goals.

 

Efforts to strengthen information integrity are crucial to preserve and further advance the Sustainable Development Goals. Erosion of the integrity of the information ecosystem can worsen existing vulnerabilities in achieving the Goals, in particular for countries in the global South. Groups in situations of vulnerability and marginalization are disproportionately affected. The participation of greater numbers of women in the global workforce, for instance, is vital to achieve the Goals. However, in addition to discriminatory laws and policies that exist in many countries, gender-based hate speech, disinformation and violence are used to systematically subjugate women by silencing and pushing them out of the public sphere. This can have devastating and long-lasting consequences for women’s participation, suppressing women’s voices and fuelling self-censorship, causing professional and reputational damage and jeopardizing hard-won progress in gender equality. Efforts to exploit the information space to undermine climate action further highlight the urgency of the challenge. Coordinated disinformation campaigns, often driven by commercial interests, seek to deny or sow doubt about the scientifically agreed basis for human-induced climate change, its causes or impacts, in order to delay or derail action to meet climate goals. Public figures—activists, scientists and broadcasters— have become targets of hate speech, threats and harassment for their efforts to provide information about and address the climate crisis. Across the spectrum of the Goals, from good health and zero hunger to peace, justice, education and reducing inequalities, measures to strengthen information integrity will boost efforts to achieve a sustainable future and leave no one behind.