Tag: Defence Sector

This article was first publidhed by Defence One here

A recent anti-corruption summit produced hundreds of commitments, exactly eight of which concerned defense.

Slowly but surely, the world is realizing that corruption defies borders and that governments must work together to ensure the integrity of their institutions. (See: the Inter-American Anti-Corruption Convention, signed in 1996; the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, 1997; and the UN Convention against Corruption, 2003.) But there is one area that remains all but untouched by these reforms: defense.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in January, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called corruption a threat to “global growth, global stability, and indeed the global future” and asked governments to fight it as a “first-order, national-security priority.” Five months later, countries at the London Anti-Corruption Summit released a “Global Declaration against Corruption,” in which they pledged to “put fighting corruption at the heart of our international institutions” and advance inter-state cooperation to stop corruption. By Transparency International’s count, 42 individual countries made 648 commitments across 20 issue areas, nearly one-third of which we deem both new and ambitious.

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Author: Hilary Hurd – Transparency International Defence & Security Programme

Photo: © Crown Copyright.