Opinion
The UN Convention Against Corruption
A Milestone on the Road to Curbing Global Bribery
By Frank Vogl
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President Olusegan Obasanjo of Nigeria once remarked that it would be intolerable for the children of Africa to grow up in a world where they would equate politics with corruption and the theft of the public’s money, rather than with service for the public good. He also said he would fight for a cleaner world. He has done so, as have a growing number of courageous people; one of their accomplishments is the new UN Convention against Corruption.
Corruption’s evil is well known to President Obasanjo and others like him who have gone to prison because they dared to challenge corrupt leaders. It was starkly apparent in recent years to the journalists, public prosecutors and other concerned citizens in numerous countries who were murdered as they tried to expose corruption. They all understood that corruption kills and adds to global insecurity and the risks of war; it increases poverty, curbs freedom, undermines human rights and distorts trade.
The Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index shows that levels of perceived corruption are high in most nations of the world. The citizens of many countries can tell stories about how corruption in its worst form, notably the abuse of public office for private gain, takes a daily toll on their lives. But victims have found few allies; for years the international community ignored this issue. Now a new era might well be dawning, which can give hope to the millions of people in many poor countries who pay bribes to get their children into schools, who provide under-the-table cash payments to nurses and doctors to receive health care, who must deal with corrupt officials to obtain safe water, who know that only through corrupt practices can they win their cases in the courts, and who understand that many of their officials are vastly wealthy at the expense of the public they are meant to serve.
British historian Arnold Toynbee once remarked that our time will be remembered “as an age in which human society dared to think of the health of the whole human race as a practical objective”. The new United Nations Convention against Corruption is a practical step towards that objective, and its purposes, as highlighted in Article 1, are to: promote and strengthen measures to prevent and combat corruption more efficiently and effectively; promote, facilitate and support international cooperation and technical assistance in the prevention of and fight against corruption, including in asset recovery; and promote integrity, accountability and proper management of public affairs and public property.
Actions to implement the Convention can enhance the quality of life in many countries. Few people understand this as well as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Several years ago, when he launched the “Global Compact” to strengthen corporate social responsibility, he was taken to task for not placing anti-corruption alongside environmental protection, labour and human rights as a basic Global Compact principle. He said he would work for change, but the first step had to be to secure UN-wide support for anti-corruption efforts. He has kept his word.
As the Secretary-General set out to make the case, he knew that the spoils of corruption have lined the pockets of so many government leaders for so long that building an international consensus to stop the rot and expose the villains was a Herculean task. For too many years the international community avoided public discussion at the United Nations about corruption. It seemed as if there were a giant elephant squatting under the conference table–everyone knew it was there, but nobody wanted to recognize it. Then the Secretary-General removed the tabletop to expose the beast. As he did so, he secured support from an increasing number of leaders who have become alarmed by the impact of corruption, which covers a compelling range of issues:
• International security. It is not difficult to define corruption as a killer, given that it is central to the operations of terrorist organizations. They bribe officials for visas and phony papers to transport their agents from one country to another, pay kickbacks to officials to turn a blind eye as they ship guns and other weapons across national borders, and make pay-offs to officials as they purchase arms. Terrorist organizations use bribes routinely to launder money in the international financial system—cash that is the fuel for their terror.
• Arms control. Bribery is the grease of vast volumes of arms transactions. It is key to the illegal marketing of diamonds that yields funds for arms purchases by rebel armies and Governments alike. Arms sales are so often hidden under the secrecy of a national security label that government officials engaged in both arms buying and selling, as well as their agents, perceive the risks of exposure as low.
• Poverty alleviation. Anti-poverty programmes have been sabotaged by corruption. Resources needed to feed, shelter and care for the world’s poor have been stolen by officials. Billions of dollars of governmental procurement of goods and services are tainted annually by the smell of bribery. World Bank President James Wolfensohn has made anti-bribery a top priority for his institution, because he understands that development progress requires good governance.
• Justice, democracy and human rights. In numerous countries, judges are widely perceived to be open to bribery, and public prosecutors are not only bribable but subject to pressure from corrupt politicians. Needless to say, where there is not an accountable, transparent and equitable system of justice in place, democracy is subverted and the powers of corrupt leaders are such that they risk little when they imprison and torture opponents and curb free speech.
• Fair trade. Global trade and investment are riddled with bribery. Billions of dollars of bribes are paid by companies to win contracts from Governments. While Governments of developed and industrialized countries have enacted laws that criminalize payment of bribes to foreign officials by transnational corporations, so far there have been few enforcement actions.
Oscar Arias, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and former President of Costa Rica, wrote in an article for Transparency International, an anti-corruption non-governmental organization (NGO), that “we must not despair of arresting the cancer of corruption. As much as we speak of the globalization of corruption, we must also welcome the global tidal wave of public demands for good government.” That tidal wave has helped to build the momentum that the Secretary-General needed to secure support for a new United Nations Convention. His efforts were aided by the increasing focus on anti-corruption issues by NGOs led by Transparency International and by the actions of dozens of officials and experts who negotiated during seven sessions, between 21 January 2002 and 1 October 2003, of the Ad Hoc Committee for the Negotiation of the Convention against Corruption.
The UN Convention against Corruption is not just another broad declaration to make people feel good. Rather, this is a document that deals explicitly with crucial aspects of the corruption issue (see box). Transparency International Chairman Peter Eigen has noted: “The Convention will provide a comprehensive set of standards and measures to promote international cooperation and domestic efforts in the fight to prevent corruption. The Convention addresses glaring inadequacies in two of the most critical tools for combating international corruption: mutual legal assistance and repatriation of funds sent abroad by corrupt officials.” Dr. Eigen also said that the Convention provides for an effective system of mutual legal assistance, which is essential. Frequently, anti-corruption cases are abandoned because lack of cooperation from abroad makes it almost impossible to follow the money trail. He added that “the Convention is ground-breaking in including for the first time in an international legal instrument the concept, description and processes for international cooperation in the recovery of such stolen assets. The Convention also establishes the right of people who have suffered damage from corruption to initiate legal proceedings against responsible parties.”
The Convention will not end corruption, nor is it perfect. The United Nations lacks the power to enforce its provisions, but the Convention gives the Secretary-General and the UN system the mandate to encourage civil society actions and to devote resources to striving to ensure that the fight against corruption is waged with vigour. For example, on 24 June 2004 in New York, the Secretary-General convened the “Global Compact Leaders Summit” to stimulate corporate social responsibility, where he announced that anti-corruption would be a core Compact principal. He said: “The Compact is now better positioned to address one of the most pernicious obstacles to growth and development, and to cooperate more intensively with groups such as Transparency International.”
The German theologian Dietrich Bonhöfer once wrote that “the ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world it leaves to its children”. Thanks to the efforts of many determined individuals, our children now have a better chance of enjoying lives in a world of greater fairness and transparency. The UN Convention can be a milestone on the road that heads in this anti-corruption direction.
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Frank Vogl is President of Vogl Communications, Inc. in Washington, D.C. and is a co-founder and former Vice-Chairman of Transparency International. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Partnership for Transparency Fund and of the Ethics Resource Center, a Trustee of the Committee for Economic Development, and a member of the International Advisory Council of the New Israel Fund. |
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The Convention covers many critical issues related to corruption, and this is evident in some of its provisions:
Article 5 stresses the importance of critical issues of transparency and accountability in national legal systems.
Article 9 explicitly focuses on public procurement and calls upon public authorities to “take the necessary steps to establish appropriate systems of procurement, based on transparency, competition and objective criteria in decision-making, that are effective, inter alia, in preventing corruption”.
Article 10 highlights the issue of secrecy in public administration and calls for actions to secure greater freedom of information.
Article 11 calls upon Governments to safeguard the integrity and independence of the judiciary by preventing opportunities for bribery.
Article 12 expressly raises issues of corporate governance by calling for strengthened regulatory and legal actions to curb private-sector corruption.
Article 14 hones in on anti-money laundering matters to boost prevention, strengthen reporting and tighten regulation of financial institutions.
Articles 15 and 16 bluntly decry the bribery of national and foreign government officials and call for actions to stop such practice.
Article 33 underscores the need to protect people who report acts of corruption.
Article 43 stresses the need for international cooperation to curb corruption and calls for strengthened actions.
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