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Corruption continues to take a great toll on our societies, and threatens to exacerbate wider challenges that our societies face. Corruption strikes particularly hard at the most vulnerable in our societies, exacerbating poverty and ultimately taking lives. Corruption reduces access to essential services. Corruption frustrates a lot of good intentions that society desires to implement. Corruption over shadows that the good efforts that a community initiates. In the poorest and least stable countries, corruption is the talk of the day. You have police asking for a bribe, even if you have done nothing wrong.
Globally, Corruption has become endemic and leave people feeling that the institutions supposed to help them are in fact turned against them. In a number of countries the institutions relied on to stop corruption – police and judges – were considered the most corrupt institutions after political parties.
Corruption siphons money away from public spending, and diverts valuable public income such as that coming from natural resources. It undermines both the availability and quality of these services. One of the major reasons that people in power can continue to get away with corruption is the ease with which they can use the international financial system to hide their ill-gotten gains. Global tax evasion is costing more than $3 trillion a year, according to research from Tax Justice Network.
Today the corrupt, the criminal organizations, the drug cartels, and terror networks are able to move their resources and operations across borders almost with impunity, through high technology and complicit networks and because of weak regulatory regimes and poor enforcement. They also have the resources to push back on important legislation aimed at the public good.
In today’s globalised world, international criminal networks are perfectly poised to take advantage of weak states. The globalization of crime means that the scale of international illicit trade is enormous. Such is the scale of illicit trade that it undermines national institutions. organized crime cartels growing so powerful that they challenge official government institutions, create criminal patronage networks sustained by bribery and intimidation, institute parallel government structures or infiltrate state institutions.
Hence, we need to work together to stop corruption before it becomes the norm and reaches epidemic levels. Every person should have the energy, the fortitude to show the way in the fight against corruption. Each one of us can make a difference by leading ethical personal and professional lives and we can all make a greater difference by joining together civil society, academia, governments and business to ensure that life in our community at work and in our country is our free of corruption.
So how do we stop corruption, as a first step it is absolutely vital to have strong and committed leadership at the top setting an example. Leaders who will create a culture of transparency and integrity within institutions with zero tolerance to corruption. Secondly, independent, professional, impartial, transparent judiciary is at the heart of a system that protects the people. It includes a fair and open system for the appointment, promotion, and removal of judges. In an increasing number of jurisdictions there is an independent judicial council responsible for these processes. Thirdly, education is key in building strong ethical individuals in our society. Combating corruption through education lies in incorporating ethics in the education system from the youngest classrooms to the PhD level. This can happen by making ethics part of regular courses as well as through a separate ethics stream. Inculcating basic ethical values needs to start at the youngest age through appropriate learning activities.
This is the reason to why you should get involved in the fight against corruption. Let corruption end at your door step.
