Related commentary:

Last week the website for the Global Registry of Violent Deaths (GReVD) was launched. The main objective of GReVD is to create a registry for every violent death and thereby improve the precision of the current reported numbers of violent deaths—which are all estimates. This blog post emphasizes the importance of counting violent deaths and outlines some of the main challenges to do so.

This backgrounder provides an overview of ongoing and potential work on measuring states’ achievement of goal 16.4. It begins by outlining the SDG process and how it has sought to overcome the challenges associated with measuring illicit arms flows. It then summarizes the data collection efforts to date and outlines some possible options for filling the gaps that exist.