'With corruption everyone pays'.

When people in Kenya ask you for tea, they are often not requesting a hot drink but rather a bribe. For many years, this expression has been used to put a dirty meaning into nice words, as Kenya's Permanent Representative to the United Nations Judith Mbula Bahemuka recently explained at a briefing in April 2004. As useful as this euphemism may have been for many years to avoid the word "corruption", it does represent how corruption can turn a society upside down.

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Traditionally, inviting someone for tea used to be a symbol of hospitality, one of the values of which Kenyans are proudest. Ambassador Bahemuka and her Government want to revive this traditional notion of hospitality that is connected to tea, but, more important, they want to revitalize their country: "Corruption had reached endemic proportions in our society. It had ruined our schools and hospitals. It had destroyed our agriculture and industries. It ate up our roads and jobs. It robbed, looted and plundered our resources. It killed our children. It destroyed our society." Kenya's current Government is determined to alleviate these problems by fighting corruption, identified as the principal structural bottleneck to all its development efforts and the fundamental cause of the high levels of poverty, unemployment and social backwardness.

In December 2003, Kenya was the first country to ratify the United Nations Convention against Corruption. It was also the first time that a country had signed and ratified a UN convention on the first day of a signing conference, according to UN Legal Counsel Hans Corell, the Secretary-General's representative at that conference in Merida, Mexico. By this action and by the numerous measures it has enacted against corruption, Kenya has shown the world that it takes this fight seriously.

For many years, corruption has been a major impediment to development, not only in Kenya but also in many countries in the world. By signing the UN Convention against Corruption, more than 100 countries have made the most determined global commitment yet to fight corruption and its negative consequences. As Secretary-General Kofi Annan described in his statement on the Convention's adoption by the General Assembly in October 2003: "Corruption hurts the poor disproportionately, by diverting funds intended for development, undermining a Government's ability to provide basic services, feeding inequality and injustice, and discouraging foreign investment and aid." Although not yet in force, the Convention is already generating anti-corruption reforms in many countries, Dimitri Vlassis of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) told the UN Chronicle. Once in force, it will make many of the previously voluntary measures legally binding and will require new steps against corruption.

Countries are also obliged to establish criminal and other laws to cover a wide range of acts of corruption, not only the basic forms such as bribery and the embezzlement of public funds but also trading in influence and the concealment and laundering of the proceeds of corruption.

In an ever-globalizing world, corruption is no longer confined only to national borders but increasingly transcends them. Usually, it is the companies from the industrialized North that pay bribes to public officials in developing countries, said Nancy Zucker Boswell of Transparency International at the April briefing. The Convention recognizes this transnational character of corruption and aims at countering it with cooperation on an international level. This includes prevention and investigation activities, prosecution of offenders, and mutual legal assistance in gathering and transferring evidence for use in court and to extradite offenders. Countries that ratify the Convention must also undertake measures to support the tracing, freezing, seizure and confiscation of the proceeds of corruption.

The Convention breaks new ground, especially in the recovery of assets across national borders, Mr. Annan noted on its adoption: "Corrupt officials will, in the future, find fewer ways to hide their illicit gains. This is a particularly important issue for many developing countries, where corrupt officials have plundered the national wealth and where new governments badly need resources to reconstruct and rehabilitate their societies."

Measures addressed by the Convention in the area of assets recovery include the prevention and detection of transfers of illicitly acquired assets, the recovery of property, and the return and disposition of assets.

Thirty ratifications are needed for the Convention against Corruption to enter into force, which Mr. Vlassis hopes will be achieved within twelve to eighteen months after the signing conference, thus by the middle of 2005. Its entry into force, however, will not mean that the global process of fighting corruption will be completed then, Peter Rooke of Transparency International told the Chronicle: "The world's Governments, by negotiating the Convention, have really made a political statement, and what the world will now look to is to see that implemented; so their credibility is really at stake."

UNODC and many others are working hard not to disappoint the hopes that many people have put in the Convention. Kenya's extraordinarily quick ratification facilitates these efforts as it is an important signal to other countries, Mr. Vlassis observed. "It has created momentum, particularly in Africa. Other countries are speeding up their ratification process in order to imitate the political gesture of Kenya." Once in force, a mechanism specified in the Convention will ensure its implementation. This mechanism is modelled after the provisions set forth in the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, and even goes beyond them, he told the Chronicle: "To me this is a clear indication of political will to follow up on the Convention and make sure that it is properly implemented."

As important as the Convention is in the global fight against corruption, Mr. Vlassis warns people against unrealistic hopes: "In order to make a difference, what we need to do is change the attitudes of people, and this is something that takes time because people around the world have grown used to certain forms of behaviour such as corruption." Thus, one of the current major tasks is to raise the level of public awareness of corruption and of the Convention as a proper instrument to fight it. UNODC uses every opportunity to do so, cooperating not only with Governments but also with civil society, which is explicitly recognized by the Convention to be an important factor in the prevention of and fight against corruption. This involves non-governmental organizations and community-based institutions, and above all individuals whose participation and confidence in the reforms are needed. With this aim, two video spots produced by UNODC were released in May 2004 and are planned to run in different cultural versions on television across the world. One video contrasts an abundance of money bills with scenes of misery, supported by the line: "The cost of corruption is poverty, underdevelopment, human suffering. With corruption everyone pays."

RELATED ARTICLE: Anti-Corruption Measures Within UN Institutions

Within the framework of the United Nations Convention against Corruption, the world Organization plays an important role in the global fight against this problem. At the same time, the United Nations system has to ask itself and is increasingly being asked by others, as recent allegations regarding the UN Oil-For-Food Programme demonstrate, what measures it is taking against within its own system.

The most important role in this regard is played by the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), established in 1994 to integrate and strengthen the different oversight functions: internal audit, inspection, evaluation and monitoring. Also for the first time, a professional investigations capacity was created. OIOS has operational independence, under the authority of the Secretary-General, in the conduct of oversight activities. Taken together, these activities deter fraud, waste and abuse. They are also meant to inculcate a greater sense of accountability throughout the Organization.

OIOS launched in May 2003 a preventive strategy to reinforce professional integrity as a core value within the United Nations. The Organizational Integrity Initiative aims to strengthen the system of professional integrity through a comprehensive programme of needs assessment and capacity-building. It involves executive training courses for senior managers, and a curriculum for training the staff at large is being developed. OIOS works to help offices in the United Nations to bring about responsible administration of resources, a culture of accountability and transparency, and improved programme performance. This is an effort not only to deter fraud but also to make the UN a more effective organization.

Since 1995, OIOS has exposed waste and fraud in the United Nations totalling $290 million, of which $130 million was recovered and saved. The OIOS annual budget, in comparison, is approximately $17 million.

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By Tobias Kuhlmann, for the Chronicle