Ninety-four countries attending a signing conference for the United Nations new Convention Against Corruption have already over the last three days signed “a convention with teeth”, said Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, UNODC, at a concluding press conference Thursday in Merida, Mexico.
The initial signing of the “Merida Convention” is not the end of the process, but the beginning of ratification and eventual entry into force. Entry into force will commence when a minimum of 30 countries complete the process of ratification. UN officials concluded Thursday, that sufficient ratifications of the convention are expected in the near-record time of less than two years.
– I know of no country which has stated its unwillingness to sign and ratify (statsretligt undertegne) the UN Convention Against Corruption, Antonio Maria Costa of the UNODC said.
His view was backed up by the actions and statements of the Kenyan government on the conference. – For us in Kenya, the fight against corruption is a matter of life and death, Kenyan Justice Minister Kiraitu Murungi told representatives of 120 countires. – It cannont wait for tomorrow. We believe we are doing the right thing by ratifying the Convention today, added he.
The action of Kenya was the first time a country had signed a United Nations convention and deposited the instruments of ratification on the first day of a signing conference, according to United Nations Legal Counsel Hans Corell, the representative of the Secretary-General in Merida.
– It is not by accident that Kenya has become the first nation to sign and ratify the Convention, said Mr. Murungi, stating that his country has been “on of the most corrupt nations on Earth”. He described sweeping reforms and judicial purges which had been instituted by the new government in Nairobi, and qualified it to enact ratification.
Ratification depends on countries developing legislative and administrative measures in accord with the provisions of the Convention, and giving final political approval. Once the Convention enters into force, a Conference of the States parties will be established to monitor compliance.
The provisions of the Convention require countries to criminalize a range of corrupt activities, take action to promote integrity and to prevent corruption; and to cooperate with other States parties. It also establishes, for the first time, legal mechanisms for the return of looted assets that have been transferred to other countries.
Patricia Olamendi, Mexican representative in the early negotiations of the Convention and the Subsecretary for Global Issues, expressed satisfaction that nearly all of the worlds developed countries have already signed the Convention.
Corruption is a global problem, and the day that the developed countries are described as the good guys and developing countries as the bad guy are gone, she said. Mexico would make use of procedures for the reclamation of looted assets that now reside in rich countries, she added.
At a press conference held Wednesday by experts and corruption fighters attending the Merida Conference, a benchmark figure for the dollar value of worldwide corruption was established.
By very rough but conservative estimate, income derived from illicit transactions is 5 per cent of the volume of total global output, World Bank Director for Global Governance Daniel Kaufmann said at the briefing, noting that bribes and graft make up at least half of that amount.
Given a gross world product of 33 trillion dollars, a low figure for the dollar amount paid out each year in corrupt transactions would be nearly 1 trillion dollars.
For more information, contact Tim Wall of the UN Department of Public Information, tel: 1-917-913-0226; or Juan Miguel Diez, UN Information Centre in Mexico, tel: 52-55-5435-2460.
Kilde: www.un.org/news
