The UN Convention Against Corruption: governmental perspectives in developing States

In the globalising world market, corruption is an even greater problem than before. Much of the worst corruption occurs in international dealings. A lot more occurs when the proceeds of national wrongdoing are transferred across borders.
Corruption affects both developing and developed States. It does immense and indiscriminate harm not just to individuals but to whole societies, undermining services such as education, health and economic development, commercial and political confidence, the rule of law and political stability. The usual victims are the innocent and the weak.
In December 2000, the United Nations General Assembly proposed a comprehensive UN Corruption Convention. Very impressively, this ambitious project was completed in only three years.
The Convention commits participating States to take a very wide range of steps, in four main fields.
-- States are to set up anti-corruption bodies, promote transparency in the financing of elections and political parties, take steps to prevent corruption in the judiciary and public procurement, and to raise general public awareness of corruption.
-- National criminal laws are to cover not only bribery and embezzlement, but also trading in influence and the concealment and laundering of the proceeds of corruption.
-- There will be enhanced international co-operation on prevention and investigation activities and the prosecution of offenders. Specific forms of mutual legal assistance will be used for gathering and transferring evidence for use in courts and to extradite offenders. Participating States will take steps to support the tracing, freezing, seizure and confiscation of the proceeds of corruption.
-- Asset recovery is a major issue for many developing countries, wherever the national wealth has been plundered through governmental corruption. The Convention provides for the prevention and detection of transfers of such assets, and for their recovery.
Since last December the Convention has been signed by over 100 States. Pakistan was one of the first to sign. Thirty ratifications are needed to bring the Convention into force.
The struggle against corruption costs a lot, in political will, time, persistence, and resources. If you look around the world at the most successful States and economies, it is impossible to doubt that the price is worth paying.
For any international agreement to work well, the consent of the participating States has not only to be full-hearted, but to be accompanied by political will, money, and administrative resources.
This is certainly true of this Convention. Since we all want to be thought virtuous, the mere fact that a State signs up is no guarantee of serious intentions.
Some States will become parties to the Convention in a sceptical or even grudging spirit. But from a broader historical perspective they will be sadly mistaken.
The best weapon against corruption is transparency, because with transparency come the fear and practice of exposure, both of them salutary.
Authoritarian States tend to undervalue transparency, and thus saddle themselves with particularly severe corruption problems.
Of course, significant levels of corruption can also be found within developed democracies and, often in tortuous ways, corruption can forge links between authoritarian regimes on the one hand and, on the other, businesses such as energy and defence corporations, in the leading democratic economies. Nevertheless political accountability is vital to the struggle against corruption, because accountability goes hand in hand with transparency.
How, one might ask, can a global Convention against corruption hope to succeed in a world of great political diversity?
Transparency, democracy, globalisation and capitalism have different values in different countries and under different social systems, enhancing or diminishing the Convention's attractions.
Some States will worry that the Convention may force them to modify or even abandon some of their traditional values.
"To govern is to choose", as General de Gaulle observed. Sometimes the choice is between evils, but it is still valid and still has to be made.
Certainly a price has to be paid for participating in the Convention. But the Convention leaves each State a wide discretion as to the manner of its compliance.
The real question is whether the price is worth paying in view of the benefits.
The degree to which States are prepared openly to voice their reservations about the Convention will vary from State to State and from issue to issue.
Many States, both developing and developed, perceive in almost any move towards globalisation an attempt by the more powerful to exploit them politically or economically, though some prefer to be keep their suspicions to themselves.
It will hardly be surprising if for one reason or another ambivalent feelings are quite common.
What, after all, can you be expected to do if you are an authoritarian government running, say, a petro-economy?
Your habitual ways of doing things may well be the opposite of transparent. The Convention may be perceived as a challenge by powerful vested interests. Can such regimes afford politically (or for that matter financially) to make major efforts to eliminate corruption? Will they really want to?
In the ultimate analysis, regimes don't have wishes. Only individuals do. And in politics, mere wishes are seldom decisive.
They have to be weighed against hard realities. Some leaders will recognise that, like it or not, if they make severe changes in order to implement the Convention in a matter of a few years, they will be risking major political instability and perhaps a coup d'tat.
It is all very well for secure bourgeois politicians in, say, Oslo or Melbourne, Berlin or Baltimore, to sit back and say that the Government of such and such a State must run such risks for the sake of the public good. But would the public really benefit from the resulting instability or coup?
In short, it is obvious that politics, the "art of the possible", come into the question of implementation at every point.
Ministers and officials of States with high levels of corruption have sometimes to live by endless compromises, even at the highest levels.
Overnight clean-ups are normally impossible, even for the fearlessly autocratic. But that is no reason not to make a start, a start that is as brave as circumstances permit.
Whether or not past trends in globalisation continue, there is little doubt that all nations stand to gain a great deal from the Convention. The more corruption in the national society, the more it stands to gain.
However, for practical political reasons, and often perfectly creditable ones, the manner and spirit in which freedom from corruption is pursued is bound to vary markedly from State to State, and from leader to leader.
One factor that should not be overlooked is the sheer expense of compliance with the Convention, and not just in money.
If taken seriously, the Convention will place heavy and continuing burdens on many developing States, in addition to the burdens already accepted under other international treaties and conventions. Here again, however, the direct and indirect benefits must be weighed in the balance.
The blessings of modernised administrative and legal systems, greater transparency and accountability, international co-operation and more dynamic rule-of-law processes - leading on a virtuous path to both prosperity and legitimacy - are, in the medium and long term, so huge that it is difficult to exaggerate them.
The greatest of political leaders sometimes deliberately allow themselves to appear slightly visionary, calculating that to achieve great things it is necessary to speak a deliberately simplistic language, even while recognising that the reality will fall short of the ideal. It is hard to balance this kind of leadership with a hard-headed sense of the practical, but in this field it will often be essential to do so.
At the outset, the difficulties and expense may seem more apparent than the benefits. Careful planning and budgeting, political and public enthusiasm and cross-party support will all be important elements for success.
The task is therefore profoundly challenging. But the difficulties are recognised. The Convention provides for a conference of the participating States to review implementation and facilitate activities required by the Convention. As always, if States co-operate, they can make dramatic progress.
There is no better way, and in this field there is, for many States, no worthwhile alternative.
Although the Convention genuinely is excellent, well-intentioned, ambitious, far-reaching and comprehensive, there is a crying need for adequate resources so that developing States can comply fully and reap proper benefit.
No State can operate at the required level unless it has the necessary legal, administrative, educational and professional infrastructures, coupled with the political will.
At present there are signs that a number of richer States may be willing to make significant resource contributions.
It would be mistaken to waste much time on suspicions as to their motives. As Deng Xiao Ping was fond of saying: "It doesn't matter whether a cat is white or black, so long as it catches mice".
(Alan Perry is the Head of Public International Law at London law firm Kendall Freeman)