Corruption denies right to life says Transparency International by AlertNet & agencies 1:42am 8th Jun, 2010   Ahead of the global meeting to review promises to cut poverty and hunger by 2015, watchdog Transparency International spoke to AlertNet to stress the importance of fighting corruption to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and broader progress in developing countries.    The eight promises include halving the proportions of poor and hungry people, getting all children into school and eliminating gender inequality in education, reducing the death rate among mothers by three quarters, and halving the share of people without access to better drinking water.    The anti-graft body released a report last week that uses hard facts and figures to support its call for governments, donors and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to adopt anti-corruption measures in their action plans to reach the MDGs.    Below are some questions and answers from Transparency International (TI) Chairwoman Huguette Labelle:    Q: Could you explain how, in practice, an anti-corruption agenda could be included in an MDG action plan?    A: First of all, the tendency is always to be silent on the issue of corruption, although much less in the last twenty years than before. And when people are at a meeting like this, you talk about the importance of water, you talk about the importance of maternal health, of education etc and if at the same time, you don''t say ''OK, if we''re to meet these MDGs, if we want to make sure that all the money that we''re putting forward to it is going to reach the persons intended, then we''ve got make sure that we give ourselves the means to make sure it does''... If we want to meet those goals, we''d better pay special attention to the issue of corruption.    Q: With every NGO looking to use this summit as a way of promoting their agenda, how will TI make sure that it gets its point across above the noise of everyone else?    A: To us, the question of corruption is a question of human rights very often. If your life is denied, if you''re denied access to essential services as is the case under corruption, then people''s right to life, to essential living is denied. Now, in terms of (the summit), of course, there will be a lot of organisations, there will be organisations focusing on water, on sanitation, on human rights and so on, and that''s fine. I feel that the issue of corruption is one that permeates all of them - and that''s the difference. As opposed to being just a vertical issue, it''s a horizontal issue... If people do illegal logging and then you have a massive rain that comes and soil just picks up all the houses as we see in some countries and brings them down to the bottom, with large numbers of deaths and massive ecological damage, then the environment and corruption are very inter-related. This is the issue with corruption: it''s one that touches all aspects and can have tremendous potential if it''s dealt with in reducing some of the massive problems that we have.    Q: Does governance matter as much as money or more so in the work towards the MDGs?    A: I think we need to be very consistent about the fact that resources are needed but you need to make sure that every euro and dollar that is spent, that goes towards the development goals, really (is) spent on the intended purpose and that money is not lost along the way, that the resources of the developing countries are not lost... The cost, that is also when you''re looking at the Millennium Development Goals, is really lives. It is people who will lose their lives because water is dirty or there isn''t any water. Transparency International''s 2008 report was on corruption and water, and looking at that we estimated that about 40 billion (dollars) is added to the cost of meeting the MDGs on water and sanitation because of corruption.    Q: Do you think donor countries should withhold aid if the recipient government refuses to accept anti-corruption provisions within that aid?    A: I think that donors need to be very careful, need to negotiate a good programme of transparency, better governance, follow the money, making sure that everything is very transparent within countries. And if a country is highly corrupt, the hazard is that some of that donor money is going to be lost, then I think that what the donor needs to do is not abandon the people of that country but negotiate a way that they provide the money more directly to NGOs that have very high integrity as opposed to putting it into the budget of the country. And at the same time, support the country and work to encourage the country - if the country is ready - to improve its governance so that it can then be more trusted with the money that might be put in its budget.    Q: Many of TI''s most successful MDG initiatives have revolved around helping groups within civil society to hold governments to account. How can you do more of this?    A: We have been pressing (for) transparency for budgets in education and health so that we say that the budget for that school should be on the door. So that the people of that community...can see that there''s a budget but there''s no teacher. So what''s the problem? The same thing with the budget for local government... We believe now that local government - because so much has been delegated to local government - really has to receive much more attention because a lot of corruption can happen there. Very often it''s where public works are done, where money is provided for health and education, to be managed locally more and more.    Q: What role do journalists have to play within that structure?    A: Without the media, there would be very little information that people could access. Therefore, when we''re talking about transparency, when we''re talking about the public knowing what''s happening...you can have a budget but unless the media is able to publish it, inform the public about it, help the public understand, we would have very, very little. So the media is essential. We say that on the one hand, the judicial system, the financial system is vital and then a free and responsible media is really part of the solution. Most of our awards that we do every year, most of them have gone to media people because they were very brave in many circumstances. Visit the related web page
	Next (more recent) news item
	Next (older) news item