Tag Archives: G20 Anti-Corruption Working Group

Guest Post: Pushing for Anticorruption through the G20 Civil Society Engagement Process

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Today’s guest post is from Blair Glencorse, the Executive Director of the Accountability Lab. 

As many readers of this blog know, the annual G20 meeting has a variety of associated processes, including a forum for engagement with global civil society known as the C20. This is an opportunity for civil society organizations (CSOs)—including grassroots groups, rights-focused organizations, and other activists—to feed policy recommendations directly to the most powerful governments in the world. This process has not been without challenges, especially when the G20 meeting is held in a country that is not exactly friendly to civil society activism (including Russia in 2013, China in 2016 and this year in Saudi Arabia). More generally, promises have not always matched realities, and governments have not always lived up to their commitments. Nevertheless, the C20 remains an important mechanism for ensuring that diverse, citizen-oriented voices from civil society are heard as part of G20 decision-making.

The C20 has a number of working groups, including an Anti-Corruption Working Group (ACWG), which I am co-leading this year with Dr. Saleh Al-Sheniefi. Our mandate is to prepare “comprehensive recommendations for consideration by leaders on how the G20 could continue to make practical and valuable contributions to international efforts to combat corruption.” The ACWG has active participation from civil society members from more than 50 countries, and—after consulting with other G20 engagement groups and consulted with numerous external experts—we have drafted a 3-page policy paper which will be sent to the parallel G20 Anti-Corruption Working Group in mid-May. The paper is open for comments for the next several weeks; and we would welcome any and all ideas from this blog’s readership.

While there are obviously many aspects of the corruption problem and its potential solutions that we could have addressed, we chose to focus on what we understand to be the G20’s main anticorruption priorities. (Our thinking is that, while getting the G20 to listen and live up to its commitments is always challenging at best, the odds are better if civil society’s recommendations align with the G20’s own sense of its top priorities in this area.) In particular, our policy paper focuses on the following items: Continue reading →

Guest Post: If You Were a G20 Leader for a Day…

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Maggie Murphy, Senior Global Advocacy Manager for Transparency International, contributes today's guest post:

Remember the big headline from the recent G20 Summit in Hamburg, about what leaders are going to do to tackle corruption head-on?
No, we don’t either. Corruption remains a bit of an afterthought in G20 thinking on progressing the G20’s objective of “strong, sustainable, balanced and inclusive growth” (page 14 of the most recent Communiqué), despite the almost plaintive opening line in the current G20 Anti-Corruption Action Plan that “[r]educing corruption remains a top priority for the G20.”
Corruption should be preoccupying for G20 leaders. In the last 12 months alone, the presidents of G20 members South Korea and Brazil have been impeached (and Brazil’s current president is also facing corruption allegations) and the former Argentinian president was indicted for corruption.
Despite the lack of public emphasis on fighting corruption, the G20 does have well-functioning G20 Anti-Corruption Working Group (ACWG). The ACWG meets three times a year, works to biennial Action Plans, and advises G20 leaders on where to channel their energy in tackling corruption. The ACWG touches on a wide range of topics, from asset recovery, to open data, to the illegal trade in wildlife. The ACWG adopts principles, issues individual country guides, conducts self-assessments, and develops good practice, research, and toolkits on certain issues. The 60 documents the group has developed since 2010 can be found on a helpful but hidden website compiled by the German Ministry of Justice.
But we don’t hear much about the ACWG's work, even less its impact. Clearly it needs a shake-up.
As new G20 host, Argentina should lead the development and adoption of a new biennial Anti-Corruption Action Plan. But that would be simply more of the same. Is it time for the G20 ACWG to have a rethink? Continue reading →

Guest Post: Did the London Summit Make a Difference to Open Contracting? Does Open Contracting Make a Difference for Tackling Procurement Corruption?

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Gavin Hayman, Executive Director of the Open Contracting Partnership, provides today’s guest post:

Anyone remember the London Anti-Corruption Summit last May? It seems like a long, long time ago now, but it was a big deal for us when 14 countries stepped forward at the Summit to implement the Open Contracting Data Standard to open, share, and track all data and documents coming from the billions of dollars that they are spending on public contracting and procurement each year.

One year later, how well have these countries have followed through on their commitments, and how much of a difference open contracting has made in combating corruption in public procurement? After all, it is government’s number one corruption risk; it’s where money, opacity, and government discretion collide.

The news is generally positive: the Summit commitments appear to have promoted genuine progress toward more open contracting in many of those countries, and the preliminary evidence indicates that such moves help reduce procurement corruption. Continue reading →

Guest Post: Hosting Proceeds Down Under — Australia and the G20 Anticorruption Agenda

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Professor Jason Sharman of Griffith University, Australia, contributes the following guest post:

On November 15th–two days from now–the latest G20 leaders’ summit kicks off in my home town of Brisbane, Australia, with anticorruption once again on the agenda. Though the G20 Anti-Corruption Working Group has made some important progress, many of the member states have been letting down the side. Specifically, Australia tends to receive less critical scrutiny than it should when it comes to international action against corruption, particularly in terms of hosting stolen assets from other countries in the region. And the G20 leaders’ summit is as good a time as any for the international community to press Australia for its many failures to deal with its status as a regional haven for money laundering in the Asia-Pacific. Continue reading →