SDG 16.1 Security and peace

To reflect the Dutch context of SDG 16 better, we have divided it into two. This first part of SDG 16 focuses on making the world a safer place to live, and ensuring that everyone everywhere has access to a fair judicial system. In this context, it focuses on reducing all forms of violence, especially against children, and reducing corruption, organised crime and illegal weapons trade.

Summary of results
Dashboard and indicators
SDG 16.1 Security and peace
Further reading

Summary of results

Most medium-term trends (calculated from available data for 2015-2022) are neutral: they are not increasing or decreasing significantly.
Registered crime, crime victim rates and government spending on national defence are all trending towards higher well-being. The trend for trust in the police is also green.
The number of police officers per 100 thousand population is trending downwards, just as the rule-of-law indicator, which reflects how much the population trust laws and regulations, and to what extent they obey and abide by them. These trends are both unfavourable from the point of view of well-being, and both are red.
Positions of the Netherlands in the EU rankings vary between the indicators: three score in the lowest group, three in the top group and three in the middle group.

Dashboard and indicators

The main subjects of SDG 16 are making society a safer and more peaceful place to live and the institutions responsible for enabling and enforcing this. This first dashboard (16.1) focuses on security and peace; the second dashboard (16.2) examines the relevant institutions in more detail.

To achieve safety and peace, all forms of violence and related deaths must be reduced. SDG 16 pays specific attention to violence against children and to organised crime. In a safe society, everyone has access to a fair legal system, and systems are in place to tackle corruption. People who do not feel safe – and therefore feel vulnerable and insecure – may experience this is having a major impact on their personal lives. How safe people are, and how safe they feel, therefore both have an effect on well-being ‘here and now’.

It is the job of the armed forces, police and judiciary to strengthen and enforce security, by means of preventive measures and through the legal system. As public trust in these institutions may increase people’s sense of security, indicators on trust in the police and in the armed forces have been added to the dashboard.

As result of changes in the questions and the design of the survey underlying the 2021 Safety monitor, its results are not directly comparable with those from previous editions. The safety monitor is published every two years. No new results are available for 2022.In terms of trends, the picture for this dashboard is fairly positive, with most indicators pointing to stable or rising well-being. The trend is moving away from the goal only for the operational strength of the police (per 100 thousand of the population) and rule of law. International comparisons are not possible for all indicators in this dashboard; where they are, Dutch performance is evenly spread: three positions in the lowest groups, three in the top groups and three in the middle groups.

SDG 16 Peace, justice and strong institutions: security and peace
Resources and opportunities
2.0%
of gross domestic product in 2021
11^th
out of 27
in EU
in 2020
Government expenditure on public order and safety
1.3%
of gross domestic product in 2021
14^th
out of 27
in EU
in 2020
Government expenditure on defence
290
police officers per 100,000 population in 2021
19^th
out of 25
in EU
in 2021
Police officers
Use
63
detainees per 100,000 population in 2020
2^nd
out of 26
in EU
in 2020
Detainees
11.1%
of all suspects in 2022
19^th
out of 24
in EU
in 2020
Underage suspects
Outcomes
0.7
deaths per 100,000 population in 2021
10^th
out of 26
in EU
in 2020
Deaths due to homicide
45.8
offences per 1,000 population in 2022
Registered crime
17.1%
of the population over 15 are crime victims in 2021
15^th
out of 19
in EU
in 2020
Victims of crime
16.9%
of the population over 15 are cybercrime victims in 2021
Victims of cybercrime ^B)
4.5
reported victims per 100,000 population in 2021
Victims of human trafficking ^C)
11.0%
of women aged 12-24 experience sexual violence in 2017
Young women experiencing sexual violence ^B)
352
reports to Safe at Home (Veilig Thuis) per 100,000 of the population 2021
Suspected child abuse
2.0%
of men aged 12-24 experience sexual violence in 2017
Young men experiencing sexual violence ^B)
1.74
score on a scale of -2.5 (weak) to 2.5 (strong) in 2021
5^th
out of 27
in EU
in 2021
Rule of law
Subjective assessment
77.0%
of the population over 15 answered “very high“ or “fairly high“ in 2022
2^nd
out of 19
in EU
in 2020
Trust in the police
63.7%
of the population over 15 answered “very high“ or “fairly high“ in 2022
Trust in the army
2.0%
of the population over 15 often feels unsafe in 2021
Often feeling unsafe in the neighbourhood

Resources and opportunities in this context relate to resources used to guarantee due process of law and national security. The medium-term trend in government spending on national defence is upward, although the share, 1.3 percent in 2021, is still well below the 2 percent NATO target. The government is currently making funds available to increase the percentage of GDP spent on defence. The trend in public order and security spending is stable.

Although the number of police officers has risen, as the population has risen by relatively more, operational strength per capita is declining. The medium-term trend in the number of police officers per 100 thousand of the population is downward. Operational officers are officers who are available for direct contact with the public and/or contribute directly to core police tasks. Following a peak of 307 full-time equivalents (FTEs) per 100 thousand inhabitants in 2012 and 2013, it fell to 290 FTEs in 2021. This puts the Netherlands among the stragglers in the EU27.

Use for this SDG is the number of people who come into contact with the judiciary or who make use of the judicial system. The number of people in prisons, penitentiaries and disciplinary institutions is relatively low by international standards: 63 per 100 thousand inhabitants in 2020. However, the number of underage suspects (as a percentage of all suspects) interrogated by the police is high compared with other EU countries: the Netherlands ranked 19th out of 24 in 2020. The percentage has been around 10 to 11 percent for a number of years now.

Outcomes concern the number of crimes committed and the victims of these crimes. A lot of crime goes unrecorded, partly because it is not reported. Added to this, types of crimes that are recorded may differ from country to country. Victim surveys, such as the Netherlands Safety monitor, include crime reported by the victims in the survey, which they may not officially have reported to the police. This gives us a rough idea of the level of non-reported crime: crimes that have taken place according to the survey, but of which the police have no record.

In 2021, 114 people in the Netherlands were victims of murder or manslaughter, of whom one third were killed in the three largest cities: Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague. The trend is stable. In relative terms, too, the largest cities record most murder and manslaughter victims. Fewer and fewer people report having been victim of crimes such as violence, burglary, theft and vandalism: 17.1 percent of the population aged 15 years and older in 2021. In 2015, at the beginning of the trend period, the figure was 26.9 percent. The police also recorded fewer of these crimes: 45.8 per 100 thousand inhabitants in 2022 compared with 57.9 in 2015. The trends are downward for both indicators, although for crime victims, the Netherlands still occupies a position in the lowest group of EU countries.

The 2021 Safety monitor carried out a new, more extensive measurement of online crime victims, which showed that 16.9 percent of the population were victims of some form of cybercrime in 2021. This figure is not comparable with results from previous years and it has not yet been possible to calculate a trend because of the two-yearly frequency of the survey.

It is difficult to get a reliable picture of human trafficking in the Netherlands. The number of reported trafficking victims decreased further in 2021, to 791. This is the equivalent of 5 per 100 thousand inhabitants and is clearly below the peak in 2019 (7.9). During the coronavirus pandemic, travel was restricted and investigation of people smuggling was hampered by the imposed measures. The data are provided by the Dutch National Rapporteur on Trafficking in Human Beings and relate to registered victims. Reported numbers depend on the regulations in place at any one time, and on the staff capacity for victim registration. The quality of the figures is still insufficient to determine a trend. The data protection act introduced in 2018, for example, has discouraged organisations from reporting trafficking cases. Moreover, since 2019 victims are only eligible for a temporary residence permit if the Public Prosecutor’s office considers their presence is required for the investigation and prosecution of traffickers. This may have discouraged victims from reporting to the authorities. A report on human trafficking in the Netherlands by the universities of Tilburg and Utrecht commissioned by the Research and Document Centre of the Ministry of Justice and Security (WODC) estimated the number of victims at around five thousand. This would indicate that only a relatively small proportion of victims come to the attention of the authorities.

Together with the municipal health services, Rutgers Knowledge Centre on Sexuality and the organisation to prevent sexually transmitted infections and Aids (Soa Aids) conduct a periodic survey on sexual relations under the age of 25 years in the Netherlands. The survey provides a picture of the sexual health of the age group 12 to 24 years. Previous editions were published in 2005 and 2012, the most recent survey was in 2017. According to the 2017 survey, the proportion of boys and young men who were victims of sexually transgressive behaviour was 2 percentage points lower than in the previous survey in 2012; this is half the original figure. For girls and young women, the percentage fell from 17 in 2012 to 11 percent in 2017. The survey frequency is too low to identify a trend, and no international data are available.

Reports of actual or suspected child abuse to the 26 Veilig Huis (Safe Home) organisations in the Netherlands numbered 352 per 100 thousand inhabitants in 2021. The number of reports is not necessarily the same as the number of children involved: one report may refer to several children. Moreover, people reporting suspected child abuse may also report suspicions of other forms of domestic violence.

In previous editions of the monitor the indicator ‘rule of law’ was called ‘trust in rule of law’. Rule of law is one of six aspects of good governance measures in the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators. Although the trend is downward, the legal system in the Netherlands functions relatively well, as reflected by the score of 1.74 on a scale of -2.5 (weak) to 2.5 (strong). Within the EU, only Finland, Denmark, Luxembourg and Austria have higher scores.

Subjective assessment concerns trust in the judicial system, trust in the police and how safe people feel. A number of trust indicators have been added to the dashboard. Trust in the police is high and the trend is rising: 77.0 percent of the Dutch population had sufficient trust in the police in 2022. A substantial share of the population also trusted the armed forces: 63.7 percent responded with a score of 6 or higher on a scale of 0 to 10. This result is significantly lower than the 72 percent measured in 2021, and the medium-term trend (2015-2022) has turned from rising to neutral. The percentage of people who frequently feel unsafe in their own neighbourhood is no longer decreasing.