Successful Anti Corruption Forum
Africa Forum on Fighting Corruption prepares for Global Forum
At the conclusion of the three-day Forum, a common African position for the Global Forum V on Fighting Corruption and Safeguarding Integrity was prepared by the 300 delegates who attended the African Forum on Fighting Corruption at Kempton Park. Ekurhuleni in South Africa.
African ministers, parliamentarians, representatives of anti- corruption agencies and civil society organizations, former Heads of State and international organizations, including donors, attended attend the Forum in Johannesburg from 28 February to 2 March 2007.
Its co-hosts were the South African government, the African Union Commission (AUC) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).
The recommendations from this African Forum will be tabled at the African Union (AU) Heads of State meeting in Ghana and will also form part of Africa’s position at the Global Forum V, an international conference on fighting corruption, which will be held in Johannesburg from 2 to 5 April 2007.
This will be hosted in Africa for the first time with the theme “Fulfilling our commitments: Effective action against corruption”. It is expected to attract 1500 delegates, including ministers and senior officials from over 100 countries.
The Ekurhuleni Declaration called on African states to increase support to independent national anti-corruption bodies and related law enforcement agencies, including judicial bodies, and recommended that they be established immediately where they did not exist.
South African Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi said the Declaration was marked by extensive discussions and debates that “reflected a high level of appreciation and understanding” of the topics at hand.
“We developed a shared understanding of corruption and (how to) take forward and deepen various instruments that have been developed to deal with corruption. This Forum has recaptured the discourse on what corruption is,” she said.
Fraser-Moleketi said delegates at the Africa Forum have “reappropriated and redefined” corruption, going beyond the simple corruptor-corruptee relationship that tended to purely focus on “perfection and blame”.
“We agreed that corruption is a global phenomenon. It is rooted in history but its contemporary manifestations must be located in the understanding of globalization (going) further back in colonialism and neo-colonialism”she concluded.
Various anti-corruption initiatives are being undertaken within regional economic communities or under the auspices of the African Union, or as initiatives of African development partners and donors or by civil society. Many of these initiatives areintrinsically linkedand underpinned by broader governance or economic reform programmes and agendas.
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