It's time for the international community to put an end to impunity, say officials at a high-level U.N. conference on graft
MARRAKESH (TrustLaw) - Millions of people expressed their frustration with corrupt regimes during the Arab Spring and now it is time for the international community to follow through with tough measures to put an end to impunity, officials at a high-level United Nations conference on graft said on Monday.
Delegates from more than 100 countries are meeting this week in Marrakesh, Morocco, for a review into how governments that signed up to the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) are doing in their efforts to fight graft and to speed up the process of recovering stolen assets.
"There can be no doubt that the Arab Spring was an emphatic rejection of corruption and cry for integrity," Yury Fedotov, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) told delegates at the opening ceremony.
"With millions of ordinary people having said 'no' to corruption, it is now for the international community to listen and to display a renewed commitment to preventing and combating corruption," said Fedotov.
UNCAC, ratified by more than 150 countries, provided the strongest possible framework in the fight against corruption, Fedotov said, but acknowledged that there was "no silver bullet' in the battle against graft.
When it was launched eight years ago, UNCAC set the agenda in the fight against corruption, addressing thorny issues such as the cross-border nature of corruption and the return of stolen assets, as well as stipulating that countries need to take preventive measures to fight graft.
Civil society organisations attending the conference also stressed that fighting corruption needed to be on a global scale and urged full involvement of non-governmental organisations in reviewing progress.
"The global community must send a message that the international financing system can no longer be abused for proceeds of crime and corruption," Slagjana Taseva, chairwoman of the UNCAC Coalition, a global network of more than 300 non-governmental organisations from over 100 countries, told a news conference.
Morocco's king, Mohammed VI, said that fighting corruption was a key concern for citizens worldwide.
"Combatting corruption now tops the list of citizens' concerns," King Mohammed said in a message read out to delegates. "It is a pressing concern. The scourge of bribery and corruption is no longer a domestic problem."
STOLEN ASSETS AND TRANSPARENCY
The conference, attended by more than 1,000 delegates, including over 24 government ministers, will debate measures to speed up the recovery of assets stolen by corrupt governments and salted away in remote places.
"The message is simple: there can be no safe havens for stolen assets," said Fedotov.
Working with the World Bank, UNODC uses UNCAC as the foundation for its joint Stolen Asset Recovery (StAR) initiative to work with governments, regulatory authorities and financial institutions to empower national authorities to trace, confiscate and recover stolen assets but also to ensure that funds remain where they belong, said Fedotov.
The conference will also examine the results of a review into how 26 of the signatory countries to UNCAC are doing in implementing the convention. As part of a peer-to-peer review process, launched last year, each country is assessed by two others.
Campaigners and experts say the review process is riddled with secrecy, while the lack of a mechanism to “name and shame” the countries doing least to fight sleaze raises question marks over UNCAC’s impact.
Civil society organisations led by anti-graft watchdog Transparency International (TI) have been conducting their own review to help keep states honest. These reports are published in parallel to the peer-review process.
Even though civil society organisations are allowed to attend the conference and hold meetings they are excluded from discussions by the main review body – the Implementation Review Group (IRG) - unless they are part of a government delegation, which only a handful of countries are allowing.
UNCAC explicitly recognises that anti-corruption efforts must go hand-in-hand with transparency and civil society participation, but some governments, led by Russia, continue to reject this notion.
"We continue to be concerned about the role of civil society in the review process," said senior TI adviser Christiaan Poortman.
"We're talking here about (the) voice of civil society … and ways of involvement that can actually strengthen the implementation (of UNCAC) of the countries that are being reviewed," he told a news conference. "Civil society is not only interested in having a voice after the fact - we strongly believe that having a voice upfront will prevent much corruption from taking place."
While all countries under review are obliged to publish an executive summary of their findings, only one – Finland – has published its full report.
Many countries also did not consult civil society in preparing their self-assessments, according to a TI survey.
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