A/HRC/43/34 32. Best practices were also presented by the delegation from Iraq in terms of how to ensure good governance in countries that lacked adequate resources and had suffered from major difficulties such as terrorism and dictatorship. For example, the Government of Iraq had been able to organize a peaceful transition of power through parliamentary elections that took place in difficult security conditions. It also ensured the continued functioning of its institutions, which were the foundation of good governance. Those achievements provided a positive example for countries facing political and security problems by promoting and protecting human rights through good governance. 33. Speakers also emphasized that since the Sustainable Development Goals were a prevention agenda, investing in them meant investing in further development, preserving peace and preventing conflict in fragile and unstable regions. Scrutiny of cases of structural poverty, conflict and instability had revealed that patterns of human rights violations often lay at their heart. As such, speakers suggested that Goal 16 reflected the human rights dimension of the 2030 Agenda. However, they also indicated that good governance was a critical precondition for the successful achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. 34. Since human rights principles underlay the content and process of good governance efforts, they informed the development of legislative frameworks, policies, programmes, budgetary allocation and other governance measures. Thus, not only was good governance a precondition for the realization of human rights, but it could also provide a set of performance standards against which government actors could be held accountable. Drawing upon the panellists’ statements, speakers agreed that a human rights-based approach to policies and strategies related to the Sustainable Development Goals was critical for promoting social cohesion, preventing conflict and ensuring peaceful, just and inclusive societies. 35. The representatives of New Humanity drew upon Sustainable Development Goal 11, on sustainable cities and communities, and said that innovative versions of democratic processes emerged in cities and participation was greatly valued. Other speakers remarked that cities could enable a new system of governance, called “co-governance” where cooperation and exchange of knowledge could strengthen democracy. 36. The representative of the Association for the Prevention of Torture asserted that sustainable development and torture prevention were interdependent. Sustainable Development Goal 16 included the targets of significantly reducing all forms of violence and ending torture of children, and thus promoting the rule of law and ensuring equal access to justice, as well as developing effective, accountable and transparent institutions at all levels. Institutions such as national mechanisms with a mandate to prevent torture and other ill-treatment had to be reinforced. With those reinforcements, the institutions could contribute to creating peaceful and inclusive societies, with a focus on increased transparency and accountability. C. Responses and concluding remarks 37. In her concluding remarks, Ms. Lindberg underlined the need for more and better data on Sustainable Development Goal 16. While statistics relating to different governance aspects did exist, the range of institutions, concept and labels varied across countries: a common conceptual framework for governance would support the gathering of more robust and useful statistics. Currently, only 4 of the 44 measurable indicators for Goal 16 and Goal 16+ had data for 163 or more countries. More efforts should be devoted to thoroughly assessing the quality of existing governance statistics, as a preliminary step towards providing general advice to statistic producers and users. Lastly, she encouraged national statistics offices to consider governance statistics as part of their routine products, subject to the same quality standards and requirements that applied to other social, economic and environmental statistics. To support the development and collection of more robust data for monitoring the implementation of Goal 16, OECD was contributing to the Praia Group on Governance Statistics, in particular on measurements related to responsiveness, trust, openness and justice. 7