Global Forum Seen as Moving Fight Against Corruption Forward

The Hague -- A conference of more than 100 countries has added impetus to the global fight against corruption, a U.S. State Department official says.

The official, who asked not to be identified, said the Second Global Forum on Fighting Corruption and Safeguarding Integrity May 28-31 in The Hague has demonstrated a sharp rise in international awareness and concern about the problem over the past two years.

In a May 30 interview, the official said progress since the first Global Forum in Washington in 1999 was evident not only in the detail of the second forum's emerging final declaration but also in the breadth and depth of its three days of workshops.

While describing the 1999 forum's declaration as brief and "rarified," the official said the declaration being prepared for the 2001 gathering will suggest specific actions for countries to take -- although it will be non-binding.

He expected the final declaration, which the forum should release May 31, to laud the concept of peer review, which a few existing initiatives employ successfully. For example, the World Customs Organization developed a robust program for its member national customs services to subject their anti-corruption programs to peer review. Romania, Lithuania and Poland have agreed to conduct mutual evaluations of each other's national anti-corruption strategies.

The five three-day workshops allowed detailed discussions of different aspects of corruption: governance, law enforcement, customs, economic development and business.

No international meeting by itself will defeat corruption, the official said. Fighting corruption requires sustained activity by national governments inside their borders and increasingly in cooperation with other governments across borders, he said.

Such meetings, though, can build support for the harmonized standards, peer reviews and other forms of cooperation that a successful global fight against corruption requires, he said.

The official likened the fight against corruption to the decades-long struggle in Europe for democratic governments. The non-binding principles of the Helsinki Final Act -- harmonized standards and peer reviews -- did much over years to promote the emerging democracies in Central and Eastern Europe, he said.

The United Nations could soon begin negotiating a global agreement on standards for preventing, disclosing and punishing corruption. A July meeting in Vienna could decide the direction of that negotiation. Because of the work of the global forums and other initiatives, the UN negotiators will have a lot of information on which to draw, the State Department official said.

Unresolved at the Second Global Forum was an issue of great importance to developing countries -- repatriation of money hidden by their former corrupt leaders in banks and other investments in developed countries.

The repatriation issue did not hijack The Hague forum as some developed country officials feared it would. The State Department official said both sides are creeping toward accommodating each other: the developed countries have recognized the seriousness of the problem for developing countries, and developing countries have recognized the legal complexities for developed countries given the requirement for due process through courts under the authority of independent judges.

The State Department official said the forum in The Hague should erase any concerns about Bush administration policy on corruption. The United States cosponsored The Hague meeting and sent a large, diverse delegation led by Attorney General John Ashcroft. On the first day of the meeting President Bush issued a statement in Washington supporting the forum's work.

"Taken together these should leave no doubt that fighting corruption is a very high foreign policy priority for the Bush administration," the official said.

In addition to the UN negotiation, conferences intended to build on the anticorruption accomplishments include the 10th International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC) in Prague in October 2001 and the 11th IACC and Third Global Forum, both in South Korea in 2003.