United States Department of State (Washington, DC)
Andrzej Zwaniecki
28 February 2007
Washington, DC — Collaboration on implementing U.N. convention seen as a primary goal
Government ministers, senior government officials and experts from around the world will meet in April in Johannesburg, South Africa, to expand cooperation in exposing corruption, prosecuting corrupt officials and recovering stolen assets, U.S. officials say.
The April 2-5 ministerial Global Forum V on Fighting Corruption and Safeguarding Integrity (GF V) will allow participants to share best practices and discuss what they can do to fulfill commitments such as those made at a December 2006 conference in Jordan on implementing the U.N. Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC), according to officials.
As a comprehensive instrument with a global scope, the UNCAC can become a "potent weapon" in the worldwide fight against corruption, the State Department's David Luna told USINFO.
Luna is director for anti-corruption and governance initiatives in the department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.
The UNCAC requires countries to criminalize corrupt behavior and set up preventive measures, facilitates international cooperation and establishes a framework for recovery of assets looted by corrupt officials. It has been signed by 140 countries and ratified by 85 since the U.N. signing ceremony in Merida, Mexico, in 2003.
The 2006 meeting in Jordan of the UNCAC's first Conference of State Parties moved governments closer to a consensus on the best ways to recover stolen assets and strengthen international cooperation, Luna said.
U.S. officials also say, however, that implementing the UNCAC can be daunting, particularly for countries with weak institutions and law enforcement capabilities.
"Although the U.S. has fully implemented the UNCAC, the global community is just beginning its efforts to implement it around the world," says Benjamin Longlet, senior counsel to the assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's Criminal Division.
To support those implementation efforts, countries that have ratified the UNCAC soon will receive a checklist designed to identify their needs for technical assistance, he told USINFO.
"In Johannesburg, we will encourage parties to the UNCAC to respond promptly to this checklist so that we can begin to get an idea of where they stand in terms of implementing key provisions of the treaty," Longlet said.
He said the global anti-corruption fora have a major role to play for the foreseeable future in ensuring that the UNCAC becomes a practical instrument, rather than a high-minded declaration, and in serving as an international community intended to nurture new knowledge and innovative solutions.
But GF V is not limited to advancing UNCAC implementation, officials say.
Luna said that in recent years "there has been an upsurge of commitments in different parts of the world to develop sound anti-corruption strategies to help strengthen public and market integrity, economic development and regional stability and security."
For example, leaders of Central American countries pledged in 2006 to work on creating a "corruption-free" business and political climate by 2010, and countries of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, which includes the United States, committed the same year to deny safe haven to corrupt officials and stolen assets.
Luna said that these initiatives are signs of increased political will to combat corruption and of enhanced actions to promote good governance.
The April forum, he said, promises to support regional efforts and help advance national integrity systems by focusing on ways countries can improve monitoring and evaluation mechanisms, expand public-private partnerships and implement effective measures to prevent corruption.
Longlet said that for his department corruption remains a primary focus because it is the "linchpin" of many other global problems such as terrorism financing, money laundering and other forms of organized crime.
Law enforcement's efforts to undercut terrorism and transnational crime through anti-corruption measures also will be part of the GF V agenda.
The South African government, the host of the conference, says it also sees the forum as an opportunity to discuss corruption's impact on global poverty and "how it impacts negatively on the capacity and integrity of states."
Luna said that addressing kleptocracy through an international commitment and cooperation to prosecute high-level corruption and to recover and return stolen assets is particularly important in the global campaign to end poverty, secure public trust and enhance accountability as corruption robs nations of their full potential and people of their future.
Sharing information at the forum on ways to deny safe haven to high-level corrupt officials and to identify, trace, freeze and recover assets stolen by those officials will help advance these anti-poverty goals, he said.
The United States launched the Global Forum on Fighting Corruption in 1999 in Washington and since then the fora have become biennial events hosted by different countries.
South African President Thabo Mbeki will preside over the opening ceremony of the 2007 forum.
The official GF V Web site is run by the government of South Africa.
(USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2007 United States Department of State. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
