MESICIC Committee of Experts strives to improve government hiring and procurement systems and provide whistle blower protection in the Hemisphere.

The MESICIC Committee of Experts met December 11-16, 2006 at OAS headquarters in Washington, DC to review the progress of 6 countries in the implementation of selected measures from the Inter-American Convention against Corruption, including measures related to government hiring and procurement and whistle blower protection. During the meeting the Committee also assessed the progress of these countries in implementing recommendations from the first round of review, which included measures relating to conflict of interest, conservation of public funds, systems for registering assets, technical cooperation between States and the participation of civil society.

The 6 countries for which final reports were adopted were Argentina, Paraguay, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Ecuador and Honduras.

The next meeting of the MESICIC Committee of Experts will take place June 25 – 30, 2007. The countries to be reviewed are Bolivia, Peru, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Mexico, and Trinidad and Tobago.

The MESICIC review process operates in a series of successive “rounds” in which each State Party is reviewed to see how well it is complying with selected provisions of the Inter-American Convention against Corruption. The second round of review, which began in April, 2006, is scheduled to be completed in December, 2008. The provisions from the Convention selected for review during the second round are:

• Systems of government hiring and procurement of goods and services. (Article III, paragraph 5)

• Systems for protecting public servants and private citizens who, in good faith, report acts of corruption. ( Article III, paragraph 8)

• Acts of corruption (Article VI )

The second round reports also consider the steps taken by each State Party to implement the recommendations adopted by the Committee from the first round reports.

MESICIC, known for its acronym in Spanish, is the Follow-up Mechanism for the Implementation of the Inter-American Convention against Corruption. The Convention was adopted in 1996, and the Follow-up Mechanism was created in 2001 to monitor compliance with the Convention.

For more information about the Convention and MESICIC please visit our website.