NDI's Contribution to Public Integrity
Corruption is the illegal use of public office for private gain. Corruption is a major problem and challenge for many nations of the world. While no country is immune, corruption poses a special threat for new democracies because it challenges the ability of young institutions to respond to the public's needs and expectations and undermines public confidence in the utility or fairness of "democracy."
Grand corruption (practiced by elites) and petty corruption (practiced by bureaucrats) threaten the efficacy and credibility of the new governing institutions as well as the development of nascent market economies based on the rule of law. At the same time, the increased media freedom that accompanies democracy invites scrutiny of corrupt practices, further increasing public cynicism in government. Corruption, therefore, impedes development of the rule of law and democratic institutions generally.
Aspiring democrats worldwide are addressing the corruption problem. According to Transparency International, the aim of anti-corruption activists is to develop systems and procedures (tailor-made for each individual country) that will result in "an increase in the honesty or integrity of government as a whole."(1) "The ultimate goal of establishing a national integrity system is to make corruption a high risk and low return undertaking."(2) The development of public integrity can include measures such as enhancing a government's investigatory and enforcement capacity, ensuring the existence of an independent judiciary and implementing a competent system of public administration. An important cornerstone of any integrity system is an ethical commitment by political leaders to combat corruption, including the establishment of public sector ethics codes.
NDI's contribution to the efforts to build public integrity systems has largely been the provision of assistance to legislatures to develop ethics codes for members of the legislature and/or for executive branch officials. Ethics codes generally articulate the standards of behavior expected of public officials. To enforce those standards, the codes include a detailed set of rules that require the disclosure of public officials' financial information. These rules are intended to deter conflicts of interests or, if necessary, to catch those who do not abide by the rules.
NDI assists in the development of ethics codes by providing comparative information, expert advisors and practical assistance to legislators in emerging democracies. The Institute has developed a significant comparative library on corruption and ethics issues, is continuing to expand an international roster of technical experts to participate in our programs and is building on program activities currently underway in more than 10 countries.
While NDI's anti-corruption efforts initially responded to requests for assistance from legislators or ministers in government, this issue has also become a component of the Institute's elections, political party and civic programs and is likely to become an important part of our new civil-military relations project. And, while the Institute's public integrity efforts have largely centered on the creation of ethics regimes, NDI has also assisted governments with identifying and overcoming weaknesses in investigatory and enforcement capacities in the corruption arena.
NDI has responded to requests for assistance in developing codes of conduct for legislators, government ministers and/or civil servants in numerous countries, including Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Mauritius, Namibia, Nepal, South Africa and Turkey, and has promoted regional efforts in Latin America and Southern Africa.
In addition, NDI provided assistance to the organizers of Vice President Gore's International Conference on Fighting Corruption, held in Washington, DC on February 24-26, 1999. NDI assisted in identifying, contacting and preparing two panelists for this event (from Namibia and Georgia). The United States Office of Government Ethics presented a volume of Ethics Resource Materials (of codes, statutes and financial disclosure forms) from around the world to conference participants and credited NDI and others for cooperating in that endeavor.
(1) National Integrity Systems: The TI Source Book, ed. Jeremy Pope
(1996) at 5-6.
(2) National Integrity System Country Studies, Petter Langseth, Rick
Stapenhurst, Economic Development Institute of the World Bank (1997)
at 5.
Country Programs
Georgia
NDI was instrumental in the development of a Georgian law regulating ethics for all government officials that went into effect August 1, 1998. In the year preceding adoption of the law, NDI convened a seminar aimed at breaking a deadlock between Justice Ministry officials and the legislature's Anti-Corruption Commission. The seminar succeeded in reopening the debate. NDI also assisted the parliament in holding a public hearing on the bill that demonstrated the public's support for the measure and contributed to the law's enactment. NDI's assistance with implementation of the new law is ongoing; in the spring of 1999, the Institute organized a workshop to address deficiencies in enforcement of the law's provisions related to private employment of government officials and to gift and bribery issues.
Kyrgyzstan
In Kyrgyzstan, NDI worked closely with ethics committees of both houses of the parliament on drafting ethics rules. In 1998, NDI brought experts from the United States and Canada to address members of parliament and representatives of the executive branch on the draft bills. Following the seminar -- in a demonstration of the legislature's commitment to establishing ethics rules -- deputies from both houses formed a working group that is drafting a comprehensive ethics law with advice from NDI.
Morocco
NDI, in association with Freedom House and the American Bar Association/The Central and Eastern European Law Initiative (ABA/CEELI), supported a ministry-led effort to develop and implement a code of conduct for civil servants. The program is aimed at institutionalizing public integrity by providing technical assistance on drafting, publishing and implementing a code of ethics for government employees while concurrently engaging in a consultative, educational process to build consensus and consolidate demands for the code. As part of the program, NDI assembled an Ethics Resource Team (ERT) comprised of international ethics experts to provide technical assistance to the working group tasked with drafting the code. There are four specific objectives of the program: to assist in the drafting, publishing and publication of a clear, realistic code of ethics for government employees; to devise implementation methods and effective enforcement mechanisms with emphasis on the commune level; to assist in the creation and implementation of a comprehensive training agenda for public servants based on the code; to support current initiatives of the government to strengthen the institutions of the Inspector General and the Cours de Comptes (Appeals Court).
Namibia
NDI has worked with the Namibian Attorney General's office since 1996 to promote ethics reform through ongoing technical assistance and comparative research, by facilitating international exchanges of key leaders, and by serving on the advisory group of the government's ethics technical committee. Supported by these efforts and this technical assistance, the National Assembly has adopted a Code of Conduct.
Nepal
NDI brought ethics experts to Nepal from the United Kingdom, South Africa, and the United States in November 1997 to assess Nepal's anti-corruption mechanisms and draft recommendations on their improvement. The NDI delegation's recommendations proved influential, and following the mission, the ethics committee met for the first time to draft codes of conduct for MPs, ministers and civil servants. NDI's anti-corruption work in Nepal began in 1996 with Parliament's Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which oversees the expenditure of public funds. As a result of NDI's program, the PAC strengthened its relationship with the Auditor General's Office, developed a yearly program activities calendar, encouraged its members to disclose their assets and created networks with members from PACs from India and the United Kingdom. In July 1997, NDI conducted a program for Nepali Members of Parliament on the role of party whips and anti-defection measures to combat the problem of bribery for votes. The parliament subsequently passed a strong anti-defection law. NDI has also provided assistance to the Nepali government on methods for remedying corruption in the customs department and to an independent anti-corruption agency, the Commission for the Investigation of the Abuse of Authority, on means for enhancing its investigatory capacity.
In January 1999 NDI began Project Clean and Conscious Voter, a voter education program in preparation for May 1999 elections. The program stemmed from concerns over a history of rampant vote buying and uninformed balloting. The Institute sought to raise awareness about these problems and encourage behavioral changes through street drama, posters and wide scale radio programming. In May 2001, NDI sponsored a comprehensive evaluation of our public integrity programming in Nepal in order to develop lessons learned to help inform our other ethics initiatives.
Paraguay
In 1997 and 1998, NDI conducted a series of three studies evaluating various groups' attitudes towards their political leaders and democracy in Paraguay. These studies, which evaluated the opinions of average citizens, political party activists and military leaders, all revealed that corruption was becoming a growing preoccupation and contributing to the declining image of the country's leaders. Various sectors of Paraguayan society consulted the findings of these reports as they designed their own transparency or ethics projects. Most notably, the Catholic Church and leading lay activists consulted the NDI reports as they designed their nationwide ethics campaign entitled "The Paraguay We Want."
South Africa
NDI assisted the parliament of South Africa to draft, adopt and implement ethics code for its members. Working closely with the parliament's joint ethics committee, NDI's assistance included a study mission to Ireland and Great Britain to examine their oversight and enforcement experiences, a comparative study of ethics rules and parliamentary codes in 10 national legislatures around the world, and the establishment of an international ethics resource team of experts that provided commentary on the draft code. The resulting code, adopted in August 1996, requires members of parliament to disclose a broad range of financial interests in a register overseen by a Committee on Members' Interests. NDI provided technical guidance to the committee staff in implementing the disclosure procedures.
In 1998, NDI assisted the South African government in drafting an ethics code for ministers. NDI organized a study mission to the United States, Ireland, and Great Britain for President Mandela's top advisors to meet with senior officials from all three host governments on ethics and enforcement issues. The mission led to the Executive Members' Ethics Bill, covering cabinet members and other high level officials, signed into law in October 1998.
Turkey
NDI has worked in Turkey since February 1997, assisting the parliament to develop legislation to create a parliamentary ethics committee and a code of conduct for members. This assistance included multiparty seminars with American, Israeli, British and Italian experts. In addition to its work with the Turkish parliament, NDI has supported Turkish NGOs seeking to promote parliamentary accountability by training organizations on how to monitor parliament and enhance their public outreach and education efforts.
Regional Programs
Latin America
In collaboration with the World Bank, Transparency International and two Argentine civic groups, NDI cosponsored a regional seminar on "Transparency and Governability" in August 1997 in Argentina. This conference highlighted governmental and civic efforts to create transparency in public administration and campaign financing in Argentina, Colombia and the United States. As a follow on to the program, NDI facilitated discussions between leading American and Argentine civic groups on strategic and substantive matters relating to promoting public accountability.
In March 1998, NDI and a Paraguayan nongovernmental organization cosponsored a second regional seminar on "Ethics and Transparency" in Paraguay, focusing on various "open government" efforts within the region, including the municipal "sunshine" laws of Miami and Asunción, and freedom of information laws in the United States. Seminar participants concluded that one of the key weapons against corruption is education in democratic values and civics, especially at the primary and secondary schools levels. In response to requests for assistance in this area, NDI subsequently sponsored training for Paraguayan civil society groups, based on a Venezuelan-designed curriculum on "education in values." This program trained hundreds of volunteer university student mentors who have educated more than 6,000 Venezuelan schoolchildren. Since then, the methodology has been initiated in a half dozen schools in the Asuncion area and is expected to be expanded through a formal agreement between key civil society groups and the Paraguayan Ministry of Education.
Building on this work, NDI has worked with Radio Trinidad, a community radio station in Asuncion, Paraguay, and a participant in the 1997 regional anti-corruption conference, to develop a radio-based public education campaign on anti-corruption. NDI has worked with Radio Trinidad to produce a series of public service announcements (PSAs) to disseminate information about legal rights vis-ŕ-vis corruption and educate the public about what can be done to address the problem. These PSAs are currently being disseminated to a wide network of community radio stations within Paraguay and the Latin American region. NDI is also distributing the PSAs to non-governmental organizations through its Latin America and Caribbean Civic Network, a clearinghouse linking more than 60 leading democratic development NGOs in the region.
Southern Africa
In many countries in Southern Africa, there has been significant movement to address issues of public corruption, in all spheres of government. Country-specific initiatives to fight corruption have stimulated an interest in a regional cross-border strategy, which is being assisted by NDI. In October 1998, NDI convened a southern Africa regional roundtable in Botswana for 10 senior officials from Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, who had played a role in designing and/or implementing their country's anti-corruption programs. The roundtable marked the first time that regional leaders met on an unofficial basis to critically assess ethics measures in their respective countries and to discuss opportunities for regional, trans-national cooperation. The roundtable enabled southern African political leaders to learn from relevant experiences in the region and initiate a dialogue that would improve regional collaboration. NDI has provided technical assistance to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to support the drafting of a regional anti-corruption convention.
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