8/26/13

The best way to eradicate corruption is through development - Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland: Current affairs

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News, 12/13/2012

The best way to eradicate corruption is through development

Corruption is the worlds biggest killer, declared pop star Bono a while back. According to Johanna Jokinen-Gavidia, Ministry for Foreign Affairs adviser, the essential part of anti-corruption work is prevention.
Is the taxpayers money going down the rathole if Finland provides development assistance to countries where corruption extends from the grassroots level all through to administration? This question easily pops to mind when examining the corruption index published annually by the Transparency International organisation. None of Finland's long-term development cooperation partner countries earn even one half of the maximum of hundred points in this index. The more underdeveloped a country, the higher the corruption rate," Johanna Jokinen-Gavidia , Ministry for Foreign Affairs Senior Advisor for Democracy and Good Governance, summarises the problem. According to her, when operating in developing countries, there is always a risk of corruption. However, corruption in partner countries does not automatically mean that the problems would extend all the way to the development cooperation projects supported by Finland.
Anti-corruption sign in Kenya. According to Transparency International comparison, Kenya is the 139th most corrupt country in the world. Photo: Erlend Aasland/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Jokinen-Gavidia considers prevention the best way of combating corruption. That is also a matter addressed in the Finnish development assistance process.

We always talk about monitoring, but I would rather talk about capacity building, since major part of corruption in developing countries derives from lack of capacity. In practice, capacity building can include dialogue with governments and, for instance, provision of financing and education to supervisory authorities, JokinenGavidia explains.

Obscure agreements
In spite of all efforts, corruption still remains a problem in both rich and poor countries, and nothing indicates that it would decline any time soon. Leonard McCarthy, World Bank Integrity Vice President, says that he is concerned about the phenomenon, even though, in his opinion, world has made progress in the fight against corruption. This year, the World Bank received more than 10,000 complaints on corruption related to projects supported by the bank. Sanctions were imposed against 83 practitioners. McCarthy is particularly concerned about the rise in the number of most serious cases. For example, cases in which a company and a government make a secret pact on letting the company win a competitive tendering process, and the authority receives a bribe, are quite common, he describes.
This year, the World Bank received more than 10,000 complaints on corruption, relates Leonard McCarthy, World Bank Integrity Vice President. Photo: Simone D. McCourti/World Bank Photo Collection/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The biggest killer in the world

Why is corruption so difficult to eradicate? One cannot start eliminating corruption one-sidedly just like that. The best way is through development, and development happens slowly," Jokinen-Gavidia says.

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8/26/13

The best way to eradicate corruption is through development - Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland: Current affairs

She highlights that there are complex societal factors behind corruption, such as poverty. How can we assume that corruption could be eradicated if the number of poor people is high?" People are the most significant resource: when you are well fed and highly educated, you know to demand that certain matters are transparent. When the level of awareness rises, it also creates the pressure to change the system. At the moment, however, the poor people are the ones who suffer most from corruption, since they pay the most for it in relative terms. Leonard McCarthy points out that also singer Bono paid attention to corruption when he had a meeting with the World Bank vice president the other day. He asked the World Bank staff whether they knew what the biggest killer in the world was. Everyone thought he would say aids, tuberculosis or poverty, but he said corruption. Teija Laak so / maailma.net

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