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Last Updated: Feb 13, 2017 - 1:45:37 AM |
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.
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