OAS ANTICORRUPTION MECHANISM PROGRESSES SUCCESSFULLY WITH STATE REVIEWS AND ON-SITE VISITS

The process for reviewing the implementation of the OAS Convention against Corruption, including the recently adopted novel mechanism of conducting on-site visits, continues to make successful progress within the framework of the mechanism for following up on the Convention’s implementation (MESICIC). On-site visits have been conducted and progress has been made with the reports on the first group of states to undergo review, comprising Brazil, El Salvador, Mexico, Bolivia, and Paraguay. Those reports will be studied by the MESICIC Committee of Experts at its next meeting, in September 2012. 

In addition, with the questionnaire responses from the states for which the deadline was June 7, work has begun on the review process for the second group of states, comprising Peru, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Argentina, Trinidad and Tobago, and Honduras; this process will also include the organization and conduction of on-site visits to those countries that have granted their consent for such visits to go ahead.

On-site visits are an innovative mechanism intended to obtain objective and complete information from the states and to learn, at first hand, about their good practices and any difficulties encountered in implementing the Convention. They involve participation by the members of the corresponding review subgroup and by the Technical MESICIC Secretariat.

During the first on-site visits, meetings were held with more than 30 public institutions from the five states in the first group, at which interviews took place with more than 90 public officials, some from the most senior levels within the institutions represented. In addition, as part of the methodology adopted for these visits, meetings were held with representatives of more than 30 civil society organizations, social and private-sector bodies, professional associations, and academics and researchers, in order to address important aspects of the topics under review by the MESICIC.

Further information on the MESICIC and its on-site visits is available on the Anticorruption Portal of the Americas.