OUR GLOBAL MOVEMENT
Our annual, Anti-Corruption Lecture 2019 is back, this year with Rory Stewart MP.
The Covid-19 Pandemic has turned the world on its head. It has exposed fault lines we did not know were there, and underscored others that we did. Looking forward, government, business and civil society around the world will have to decide how we can do things differently – and better. Fighting corruption must remain a priority. Sadly, no global crisis will eradicate corruption. In reality, it can make things worse – increasing opportunities for those with entrusted power to abuse their position for personal gain.
We have already seen how pressure on stretched health resources creates openings for corruption in research, procurement, supply chains and contracts. These vulnerabilities exist at other times too and across society. The toll is huge. In the worst cases, corruption costs lives. It steals public money destined for vital services and erodes democracy, provoking instability and public distrust.
We must also remember that the UK is not an innocent bystander. You need only look at the £100 billion of dirty money flowing into Britain every year or the £5bn of UK property bought with suspicious wealth to understand the scale of challenge. Again, so often, these are ill-gotten gains that deprive others around the world of the opportunity to live a life of dignity, self-determination and prosperity.
In these uncertain times, Transparency International UK’s mission to combat corruption in the UK and wherever the UK has influence is more important than ever. This is our moment to push for powerful change.
Since 2017, the Promise to Practice project has been tracking around 170 anti-corruption pledges from over 20 countries around the world through the use of a digital tracking tool, The Global Anti-Corruption Pledge Tracker, and eight national pledge trackers. These were developed to support national advocacy efforts of Mexico, United Kingdom, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Jordan, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka.
In November 2019, three years into the project, Transparency International UK held a learning workshop with the project’s key partners to assess the impact of the project and draw out key lessons learned in order to ensure the effort’s sustainability and resonance in the future work of the Transparency International movement as a whole.
This short report provides the background to this workshop, details of what the training sessions included and how impact stories can be used as an effective way not only to communicate activities, but also to tie them together to best showcase how they are leading to project objectives, and ultimately, change in society as a whole.
To maintain the relevance of the important pledges made at the 2016 London Anti-Corruption Summit, and make sure there is accountability, for the past three years Transparency International’s global movement has been tracking the progress of anti-corruption commitments made at the Summit through Transparency International UK’s Promise to Practice Project. Three years of pledge tracking have resulted in the ability to spot big trends in the progress of commitments related to certain themes such as beneficial ownership or asset recovery, as well as identifying specific country case studies and lessons learned.
Through forensic analysis of more than 400 corruption and money laundering cases – amounting to an estimated £325 billion (US$412 billion) – At Your Service presents groundbreaking new research that sheds fresh light on the role played by UK services and institutions in the biggest corruption scandals of recent decades.
This in-depth investigation identified nearly 600 UK businesses, institutions, and individuals who have helped corrupt individuals, unwittingly or otherwise, obtain, move and defend their ill-gotten gains.
