2013 Activities

The Arab countries are at standstill in the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) 2013

The Arab countries are at standstill in the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) 2013

The Coalition for Accountability and Integrity “AMAN”, the national chapter of Transparency International (TI), received TI’s report on the results of the CPI for 2013. The report reveals that the levels of corruption and authority misuse remain high, with 85% of the Arab countries (13 countries total) included in the index had a 50% or less score on the CPI, while 66% of countries worldwide (177 countries total) are classified on the CPI below 50%. This emphasizes the need of public sector institutions for greater commitment to transparency and expanding the accountability for authorities and influential officials.

At the Arab level, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar continue to be among the least corrupt Arab countries as their results are similar to the year 2012, at 69% and 68% respectively. Bahrain regressed from 50% in 2012 to 48% in 2013.As for the rest of the Arab countries, their results are very low as they scored 47% and less, for example: Morocco scored (37%), Egypt (32%), Lebanon (28%), while Syria scored (17%), Iraq (16%) and south Sudan (11%).
These results are attributed to several reasons including: the weakness of the oversight role of the Arab parliaments and the official oversight bodies on the government performance, the absence of accountability, as well as the weakness of the role of the media and civil society organization in monitoring and holding accountable their governments. Moreover, the existing official anti-corruption bodies are still weak in their ability to hunt the corrupt, while such bodies are not yet established in a large number of the Arab countries.

 

At the international level, the Scandinavian countries such as Denmark, New Zealand and Finland continue to be in the forefront of the countries on the Index, as they enjoy high levels of transparency and accountability. This is due to the fact that these countries have a good level of economic and social stability, work traditions, democratic rule and they adopt open public policies in terms of public affairs management, in addition to the existence of free and independent media. These countries depend on a preventive strategy to prevent corruption that has a foundation of building a national system of integrity and no impunity for the corrupt.

In contrast, Eritrea, Gambia, Mali, Bosnia and Spain scored very low percentages on the index, which points out a weakness in accountability and holding the corrupt accountable in addition to the weakness of good governance in their public institutions.

The remarkable point here is the significant improvement in a number of countries on the index such as Brunei, Mnamar, Laos, and Senegal. This significant improvement reflects an improvement in the standards of integrity and accountability of the public sector in these countries.

It is worth mentioning that the Global Corruption Perception Index issued on an annual basis by TI is a composite index which uses a specific calculation method in dealing with the results of surveys and assessments that addresses corruption in the public sector. It does not provide an exact and full portrayal of the corruption in any country, since it depends on the opinions and impressions of businesses and experts’ community. The formula of percentages on this index starts form 0% (highest level of corruption perception) to 100% (lowest level of corruption perception).

Noteworthy, is that Palestine has not been included in the index for 8 consecutive years due to the lack of applicability of the methodology to the Palestinian context as the indicator requires availability of three credible quantitative sources for examination of the situation of corruption in the public sector periodically and regularly.

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