EDITORIAL - ‘An insidious plague’
Twenty years ago when the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention Against Corruption or UNCAC, there were high hopes that it would make a significant dent in the global battle against a scourge described by the UN as an “insidious plague that has a wide range of corrosive effects on societies.”
Approved on Oct. 31, 2003, signed on Dec. 9 of the same year and going into effect on Dec. 14, 2005, the landmark convention is the first and only legally binding multilateral treaty for an international campaign against corruption. With 190 state parties including the Philippines, the UNCAC also aims to facilitate cross-border efforts to recover and return stolen assets.
Marking the 20th anniversary of the UNCAC on Oct. 31 this year, a conference held in Vienna, Austria assessed the achievements, but also highlighted gaps in the implementation of the convention. The conference was attended by representatives of governments, international organizations, civil society, youth and the private sector.
They noted that international cooperation under the aegis of UNCAC, which included sharing of information and combined efforts in law enforcement, helped countries recover $4.3 billion stolen from them through corrupt practices since 2010.
At the same time, however, the conference identified over 9,000 gaps in the implementation of UNCAC along with more than 4,000 areas where technical assistance is needed to enhance the campaign.
“Corruption persists,” the UN Office on Drugs and Crime declared on the anniversary of UNCAC. The UNODC stressed that low-income states bore the burden more heavily, with the poor, the marginalized and vulnerable people bearing the brunt.
UN data, for example, showed that from 2015 to 2021, approximately 20 percent of people worldwide reported having to pay a bribe to access a government service. In low-income countries, the prevalence of bribery from 2011 to 2020 was at 37.6 percent compared to just 7.2 percent in high-income countries, according to the UNODC.
Filipinos are fully aware of this problem, but reforms have been slow in coming.
The UNODC pointed out that “a lack of effective preventive strategies and policies continues to
