OAS SECRETARY GENERAL: “THE FIGHT AGAINST CORRUPTION DOES NOT REST SOLELY WITH PUBLIC AUTHORITIES”

Source: OAS Press Department

December 9, 2014

The Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, today recognized International Anti-Corruption Day with a call on the countries of the international community to reaffirm their commitment to the fight against corruption, to “jointly tackle this problem that affects us all and that we must all work together to solve.” (Full Message of the OAS Secretary General available here).

The OAS leader recalled that the institution he leads contributed the first international legal instrument on the issue, the Inter-American Convention against Corruption and has continued in its policy of helping member states to improve their legal frameworks to address the problem and to strengthen the institutions charged with applying them, through the Follow-up Mechanism to the Convention (MESICIC).

Among the works carried out by the Mechanism, he said, are the rounds of “inter pares” analysis dealing with thirty countries of the region, which have addressed the improvement of provisions essential to the prevention of conflicts of interests, safeguarding public funds, punishing corrupt practices and achieving transparency in government procurement and the hiring of public servants.

Secretary General Insulza added that “conscious that the fight against corruption does not rest solely with public authorities, the MESICIC has involved civil society organizations, the private sector, professional and academic bodies and researchers, giving them ample opportunity to participate and express their opinions.”

On this issue, he said that in the visits carried out by the Mechanism, more than 180 civil society representatives from the respective countries have taken part. “With good reason, in an analysis done by the ‘U4 Center of Anti-Corruption Resources’ it was written that the MESICIC is the mechanism that ‘contains the strongest formal requisites on the participation of civil society,’” he said.

Finally the leader of the hemispheric institution said that all nations and, in the case of the OAS, its member states, “have a very important role to play given the transnational nature of corruption, such as by providing the broadest reciprocal assistance for the prosecution of the corrupt, their extradition to the country where they must should for their corrupt acts, doing everything necessary to recover stolen public assets, as provided for in our Convention and as our MESICIC has been repeatedly stressed."

For more information, please visit the OAS Website at www.oas.org.