NDI leads the way at the International Anti-Corruption Conference

The biannual International Anti-Corruption Conference hosted by Transparency International (TI) is the largest gathering of anti-corruption experts, activists, and government officials around the globe. This year's edition gathered over 2,000 such actors, including the President of Lithuania, for four days in beautiful Vilnius, Lithuania, to discuss progress, new approaches, and new tools in the fight against corruption and the safeguarding of democracy. As one of the preeminent anti-corruption events around the world, NDI's invitation to speak showed the importance of our institute in the anti-corruption space and allowed us to learn from other global actors on what is effective in pushing back against corruption around the world.

NDI was invited to participate in a plenary discussing the links between corruption and security, as well as speak on and host three panel discussions. In her plenary session, NDI's President Tamara Cofman Wittes noted that corruption and conflict fuel each other, and reducing corruption is an essential first step in reducing the number of grievances that lead to conflict. As Dr. Wittes mentioned, corruption is the opposite of democracy. It thrives in the absence of accountability, which is the most powerful mechanism to fight corruption. Conflict resolution needs to incorporate democratic accountability to address the grievances and inequalities that drive conflict in the first place, lest corruption rekindles the conflict.

In the first panel on the relationship between political finance corruption and environmental destruction, Senior Advisor for Political Parties Slobodan Milic noted that in the absence of rigorous and enforced campaign finance legal frameworks. This leads to corrupt actors using the money generated from illicit natural resource extraction to fund candidates who will allow further exploitation of natural resources. To promote clean campaign finance, Milic stated that political parties can implement transparent campaign contribution policies and practice sustainability in all aspects of their campaigning.

In NDI's second panel focusing on how hidden debt contributes to corruption and underdevelopment, hosted jointly with Transparency International, we launched the jointly developed Civil Society Debt Transparency and Accountability Checklist, a tool for civil society organizations to assess how transparent their country's public debt legislation is. Civil society activists could utilize the Checklist to assess what transparency and accountability gaps are in their debt legislation and advocate for reforms throughout the budget cycle and as part of debt restructuring negotiations.

Finally, NDI hosted its session on case studies on the stages of dekleptification - the process of identifying and dismantling networks used by corrupt politicians/kleptocrats to siphon public money for private gain. Speakers pointed out that after ten years of progress in dekleptification, Ukraine has maintained strong progress in rooting out corruption, and their experience provides valuable lessons for other countries and activists. From procurement to judicial reform, Ukraine has come a long way even in wartime, and is pursuing many anti-corruption cases. Zambia has about five years of dekleptification experience and is providing additional lessons on how activists and reformers can maintain momentum. As Guatemala enters into a dekleptification effort and Venezuelan civil society pre-positions for a future window of opportunity, activists are looking and learning from Ukraine and Zambia.

This type of cross-border coordination and connection strengthening can bolster efforts to successfully dekleptify. However, ad hoc information sharing will prevent reform movements from reaching their potential. Therefore, donors and civil society organizations should make concerted efforts to ensure lessons learned by anti-corruption reformers are shared worldwide for more effective anti-corruption reforms elsewhere.

Following the panels from NDI experts and others, several key points emerged as key lessons learned from the conference. First, anti-corruption actors, from law enforcement to activists and journalists to academics, need to improve cross-border collaboration. Corruption and criminality know no borders, and we, as democracy and anti-corruption crusaders, need to catch up.

Second, effective anti-corruption reforms are years in the making. In order to maintain momentum and minimize feelings of citizen apathy toward reform efforts, we need to celebrate anti-corruption victories big and small. Zambia has yet to operationalize its new access to information law, but its passage after nearly two decades of stalls and starts is an achievement in itself.

Lastly, democracy cannot function while corruption flourishes. This has been overlooked in the past, but we, as a collective of democracy activists and supporters, can do so no longer. Without tamping down on corruption, government initiatives aiming at improving education, health, and sanitation will have diminished results. By the same token, strengthening the accountability relationships between government, parliament and civil society provides the checks and balances that are essential for preventing and addressing corruption.

Overall, the event was a critical opportunity for NDI to share the lessons learned and spread its anti-corruption efforts. Corrupt political networks are notoriously difficult to dismantle and often learn from each other, but by partaking in key global discussions like this, NDI can both share its lessons learned and learn from the worldwide anti-corruption experience. Corruption is a vital issue that affects every part of democratic life, so leading and learning from the global anti-corruption effort is an important way to make sure democracy keeps on delivering.

Author:Richard Christel, Program Manager, Democratic Governance

NDI's engagement with this program is implemented with the support from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) program.

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NDI is a non-profit, non-partisan, non-governmental organization that works in partnership around the world to strengthen and safeguard democratic institutions, processes, norms and values to secure a better quality of life for all. NDI envisions a world where democracy and freedom prevail, with dignity for all.

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