An article by Christina zur Nedden, from the Communications Department at Transparency International, summarizes important achievements by civil society in fighting corruption during 2011 and highlights that many events this year have contributed to bringing corruption more strongly on the international agenda.
The author calls attention for the impact of the Arab Spring in giving unprecedented momentum to collective activism. Additionally, the regime changes in North Africa also raised important questions regarding the issue of recovery of assets stolen by dictators. In France, for instance, investigations on assets from Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria have already begun.
Initiatives by some of TI’s chapters are also mentioned, in particular projects directed at increasing transparency of expenditures in social programs, as a means of reducing corruption that directly affects the most vulnerable groups in several countries, such as Bolivia, Peru and India.
Among other achivements, this year also saw a successful campaign for increased aid transparency, promoted by a numbers of international organizations in order to pressure governments to adhere to a new set of standards in reporting about their aid flows.
The full article “Fighting corruption in 2011” can be read on blog.transparency.org. The picture above is credited to Reuters.
