On 7 May 2026, the UN Secretary-General’s independent High-Level Expert Group offered the first global answer to a question that has been on the table for decades: how do we actually measure whether a country is making progress?
The report, titled “Counting What Counts: A Compass of Progress for People and Planet,” proposes a practical panel of 31 indicators to move beyond GDP. Wellbeing, equality, sustainability, peace, human rights, and the quality of institutions form the framework of these indicators.
This is an economic document. But it carries a thesis that speaks directly to the field of dispute resolution: what we measure shapes what we value.
What Does the Report Propose?
The independent expert group, commissioned by the UN Secretary-General under the 2024 Pact for the Future, developed a panel of 31 indicators over a year of work. The indicators are structured around four components.
The first is foundational principles: peace, human rights, and respect for the planet. The second is current wellbeing: material conditions, health, education, security, subjective wellbeing, social cohesion, quality of institutions, and environmental quality. The third is equality and inclusion: tracking gaps in income, gender, and across generations. The fourth is the wellbeing of future generations: whether today’s decisions will produce value tomorrow.
The report’s core argument is this: while GDP grows, security can worsen, the environment can degrade, and social trust can collapse. People can feel left behind even as the economy performs well. This gap shows the cost of looking at GDP alone.
Why Does the Quality of Institutions Matter?
Among the report’s 31 indicators, one stands out: the quality of institutions and public trust. This indicator sits under the current wellbeing component and aims to measure something GDP has never captured: how much people trust their institutions.
This is directly relevant to the ADR ecosystem.
Mediation and alternative dispute resolution methods are mechanisms that both reflect and generate institutional trust. When parties sit down at a mediation table, they are not only resolving a dispute. They are also building, or rebuilding, trust between themselves and in the process itself.
The UN’s new framework makes this link visible: a country’s dispute resolution capacity directly affects its institutional quality indicators.
The SDG 16 Connection
Among the report’s foundational principles are peace, human rights, and respect for the planet. These principles align directly with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 16, Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions.
SDG 16 is one of the strongest institutional pillars of the mediation and ADR field. Accessible, inclusive, and effective dispute resolution mechanisms are the concrete tools of this goal.
The UN’s new compass of progress strengthens this link further: peace and strong institutions are no longer only normative goals, but measurable progress indicators. This measurement framework offers a way to make the social contribution of ADR mechanisms visible through concrete data.
What We Measure Shapes What We Value
The report’s most powerful sentence is this: “What we measure shapes what we value.”
This sentence opens up a deep question for the field of dispute resolution as well.
What do we measure in dispute resolution?
Mediation statistics in Turkey mostly focus on settlement rates, case numbers, and duration. These are important indicators. But they present an incomplete picture.
We do not measure how the parties experienced the process. We do not measure how sustainable the settlement is. We do not measure where the relationship goes after the dispute. We do not measure the contribution to institutional trust.
So what does this gap mean?
The UN’s new framework offers inspiration for this question. If social progress needs to be measured not only by economic output but by trust, wellbeing, and institutional quality, then dispute resolution also needs to be measured not only by the number of settlements, but by the trust and sustainability it produces.
This perspective allows the social value of ADR to be seen from a much wider lens. Mediation is not only a tool that reduces court backlog; it is a mechanism that supports social cohesion, institutional trust, and peaceful coexistence.
What Does This Mean for Turkey?
Turkey’s mediation infrastructure is developing rapidly. According to 2025 data, 54 percent of disputes ended in settlement. The caseload on labour courts dropped by 77.5 percent.
But other questions need to be added alongside these figures. Do these processes increase the parties’ institutional trust? How sustainable are the settlements? Do ADR mechanisms make a concrete contribution to social peace?
The UN’s new indicator panel offers a reference framework to answer these questions. Assessing Turkey’s progress in the ADR field against this framework could increase both the sector’s visibility and the importance policymakers place on it.
Sources
UN High-Level Expert Group on Beyond GDP. (7 May 2026). Counting What Counts: A Compass of Progress for People and Planet. un.org.
UN DESA. (7 May 2026). United Nations Proposes New Global Dashboard to Measure Progress Beyond GDP. un.org.
UNCTAD. (2026). Counting What Counts: A Compass of Progress for People and Planet. unctad.org.
Ministry of Justice of Turkey. (2026). 2025 Mediation Statistics. adalet.gov.tr.
UN Sustainable Development Goals, SDG 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions. sdgs.un.org.
