UN conference aims to curb corruption

Desy Nurhayati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Efforts to tackle corruption have increased during the reform era, notably with the issuance of regulations and the establishment of state and non-state agencies, but corruption remains rampant in the country.

The upcoming United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) is expected to shed some light on the issue and provide guidance to eradicate widespread corruption.

The event, which will be held in Bali from Jan. 28 - Feb. 1 and attended by participants from 140 countries, will discuss UNCAC members' progress following approval of the group in 2003 to ensure all parties are complying with the convention.

Prior to the conference, several NGOs, including the Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW), Transparency International Indonesia (TII) and Partnership for Governance Reform, will organize an anti-corruption public forum.

The forum -- to be attended by activists, scholars and representatives from governmental institutions, the private sector and donor agencies from Indonesia and several foreign countries -- is expected to generate recommendations that later will be proposed at the UNCAC conference.

Teten Masduki of the ICW said Thursday the expected outcomes of the forum would include effective strategies in fighting corruption as well as the empowerment of international civil society to maintain corruption eradication efforts.

He said the government's failure to eradicate corruption was due to the lack of a comprehensive strategy.

"The government's anti-corruption policies and strategies are merely a camouflage to conceal its inability to be serious and consistent in fighting corruption.

"There have been many laws, policies and agencies created to deal with corruption, but the corruption here is still rampant," he said.

Rizal Malik of TII said it was evident from Indonesia's Corruption Perception Index, which last year decreased to 2.3 from 2.4 in 2006, that the country had failed to overcome graft.

In the UNCAC conference, Indonesian NGOs will also present their version of the "Corruption Assessment and Compliance of UNCAC in Indonesian Law" report, which will be compared to the government's official report. The report includes an analysis on anti-corruption policies in the country.

Indonesia has ratified the convention through Law No. 7/2006 on UNCAC ratification, although it has yet to issue any other regulations to support implementation of the law.

The conference, the second of its kind after the first was held in Jordan in 2006, will include discussions about an assets recovery mechanism, an issue the government claims is a priority in its anti-corruption agenda.

Indonesia, whose billions of dollars worth of stolen assets have allegedly been hidden away in other countries by its corruptors, expects to benefit from the implementation of the UNCAC and implement a breakthrough mechanism on the recovery of these assets.

The so-called Stolen Asset Recovery (StAR) initiative will also be discussed in the conference.

The StAR initiative is a new program introduced by the World Bank and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and is aimed at helping countries trace, freeze and repatriate their stolen assets in compliance with foreign jurisdictions.