
OBJECTIVE:
Armed violence and insecurity have a destructive impact on a country’s development, affecting economic growth, and often resulting in grievances that last for generations. Sexual violence, crime, exploitation and torture are also prevalent where there is a conflict or no rule of law, and countries must take measures to protect those who are most at risk
The SDGs aim to significantly reduce all forms of violence, and work with governments and communities to end conflict and insecurity. Promoting the rule of law and human rights are key to this process, as is reducing the flow of illicit arms and strengthening the participation of developing countries in the institutions of global governance.
HOW ANIMAL EXPLOITATION UNDERMINES THIS GOAL
It has been a constant throughout human history that certain entities have had the ability to manipulate judicial and government institutions, simply through their ability to overcome opposing factors via their accumulated monetary advantages and their ability to manipulate vital life-sustaining resources. Furthermore, with their legal resources, they can avoid their obligations, such as taxes, recompense to those they harm, and instead receive government support for their degradations via subsidies. Their negative influence impacts the safety and rights of individuals, even to the extent that the collective safety of humanity is under threat thanks to their ability to create and damage environments to the extent that public health is placed at risk.
Aside from this weaving of influence, the very nature of these industries is violent, and this in turn promotes human violence via a diminishing of empathy and a twisted moral framework that treats all other humans and animals as only there to be exploited.
Animal abuse and slaughter, for commercial purposes, promotes violence, since the cruel subjugation and killing of any sentient being creates room for an acceptance, justification and expansion of violence. Aside from human-on-human violence, the PTSD incurred can lead to self-harm and substance abuse, and other serious criminal acts.
While societies base the worth of a being, not on the ability to feel pain or to know suffering, but instead on an order of hierarchy, children will continue to be terribly abused, women taken advantage of, and those whose beliefs, habits, or values differ from our own denigrated.

Further Reading:
Goal 16 : Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform (United Nations website)
Pollution “World’s top firms cause $2.2tn of environmental damage, report estimates”
– Report for the UN into the activities of the world’s 3,000 biggest companies estimates one-third of profits would be lost if firms were forced to pay for use, loss and damage of environment, Juliette Jowit, Thu 18 Feb 2010 13.19 EST – https://www.theguardian.com
“Power concentration in the global food system and the threat of Big Data” – Mega-mergers and acquisitions have led to an unprecedented concentration of power across the industrial food chain. The food sovereignty of hundreds of millions of people is at stake, and things are likely to take a turn for the worse with the introduction of new technologies and Big Data in agri-food production, distribution and retail. friends of the earth international APRIL | 2019 – https://sustainablebrands.com
Food & Farm “JBS, World’s Largest Meat Company, Mired In Multiple Corruption Scandals In Brazil” – While most of the company’s troubles have been isolated to their home country of Brazil, a recent multi-billion dollar fine has JBS officials selling assets around the world, signaling a change for a company that just two years ago boasted its “aggressive growth strategy.” By Luke Runyon, published August 3, 2017 at 4:46 PM MDT – https://www.kunc.org
“Wildlife trafficking on the rise all across Latin America” – After drugs, guns and human trafficking, wildlife trafficking is the world’s most lucrative organised crime with an annual value of around $20bn (£16bn) each year, according to a 2016 report by Interpol and the UN environment programme. Dan Collyns in Lima, @yachay_dc, Mon 7 Oct 2019 09.17 EDT – https://www.theguardian.com
