On the 10th of July the United Nations’ High Level Political Forum on sustainable development began in New York. The Forum’s aim is to take stock of how far countries have progressed towards the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), an ambitious set of development targets to be met by 2030.
Starting today and running until 19th July, governments from forty four countries are scheduled to present reports on their work towards meeting the SDGs. Transparency International is there to share its own experience measuring progress towards meeting Goal 16, “Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions”. Goal 16 includes commitments to fight corruption, increase transparency, tackle illicit financial flows and improve access to information.
While Goal 16 itself is not due for comprehensive review until 2019, there is a broad consensus that without meaningful action to reduce corruption, progress towards the other goals is likely to be extremely limited.
Corruption represents a major obstacle to reaching all the SDG goals as it hampers economic growth and increases poverty, depriving the most marginalised groups of equitable access to vital services such as healthcare, education and water and sanitation. Nor is corruption only an issue for low-income states; rich countries must take action on cross-border corruption, foreign bribery, tax evasion and related illicit financial flows which collectively deprive developing countries of around US$1.26 trillion per year.
“With corruption, there’s no sustainable development.” Jose Ugaz, Chair Transparency International
Given the scale of the problem and its devastating impact on sustainable development, Transparency International chapters and partners in 12 of these countries (Argentina, Afghanistan, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Jordan, the Maldives, Nigeria, Portugal and Peru) are presenting civil society parallel reports based on a common methodology that assesses each government’s progress towards SDG 16. All the Latin American results are presented in a regional report published last Friday.
Transparency International’s contribution is key to both holding governments to account and identifying specific recommendations for anti-corruption action. These civil society parallel reports also provide a range of alternative indicators and datasets allowing a broader understanding of corruption beyond that captured by the official global indicators, which are limited to measuring bribery in narrow terms.
Transparency International hopes that these reports will generate policy discussion and reforms at the international, national and sub-national level to clamp down on corruption and ensure that no-one is left behind when it comes to implementing the SDGs.
Original source: Transparency international.
Posted on 17 July. 2017.
