Afghanistan, North Korea and Somalia are seen as the world’s most
corrupt countries while Denmark and New Zealand are nearly
squeaky-clean, with Nigeria ranked 144th, graft watchdog Transparency
International said in a survey Tuesday.
Worldwide, almost 70 percent of nations are thought to have a
“serious problem” with public servants on the take, and none of the 177
countries surveyed this year got a perfect score, said the Berlin-based
non-profit group. Transparency International’s annual list is the most widely used
indicator of sleaze in political parties, police, justice systems and
civil services, a scourge which undermines development and the fight
against poverty.”Corruption hurts the poor most,” lead researcher Finn
Heinrich told AFP.
“That’s what you see when you look at the countries at the bottom.
Within those countries, it’s also poor people who get hurt the most.
These countries will never get out of the poverty trap if they don’t
tackle corruption.”
Among countries that have slipped the most on the group’s 2013
Corruption Perceptions Index are war-torn Syria as well as Libya and
Mali, which have also faced major military conflict in recent years.
“Corruption is very much linked to countries that fall apart, as you
see in Libya, Syria, two of the countries that deteriorated the most,”
said Heinrich.
“If you look at the bottom of the list, we also have Somalia there.
These are not countries where the government is functioning effectively,
and people have to take all means in order to get by, to get services,
to get food, to survive.”
Heinrich said Afghanistan, where most NATO-led Western forces are
pulling out next year after a more than decade long deployment, is “a
sobering story. We have not seen tangible improvements”.
“The West has not only invested in security but also in trying to
establish the rule of law. But there have been surveys in the last
couple of years showing the share of people paying bribes is still one
of the highest in the world.”
Also at the bottom of the list is North Korea, “an absolutely closed
totalitarian society”, said Heinrich, where defectors report that famine
is worsening corruption “because you have to know someone in the party
who is corrupt in order to even survive”.
Among the “most improved” countries, although from a low base, was
Myanmar, where a former military junta has opened the door to the
democratic process and, facing an investment boom, has formally
committed to transparency and accountability rules.
“That’s the only way countries can avoid the ‘resource curse’, where
the resources are only available to a very small elite,” said Heinrich.
“Nigeria and other oil-rich countries are obviously very good examples.”
Huguette Labelle, chair of Transparency, said “all countries still
face the threat of corruption at all levels of government, from the
issuing of local permits to the enforcement of laws and regulations”.
The group says that because corruption is illegal and secretive, it cannot be meaningfully measured.
Instead Transparency collates expert views on the problem from bodies
such as the World Bank, African Development Bank, Economist
Intelligence Unit, Bertelsmann Foundation, Freedom House and other
groups.
It then ranks countries on a scale of 0-100, where 0 means a
country’s public sector is considered highly corrupt and 100 means its
is regarded as very clean.
The latest survey “paints a worrying picture”, said Transparency.
“While a handful perform well, not one single country gets a perfect
score. More than two-thirds score less than 50.”
The bottom-ranked countries, scoring 10 to 19, included Iraq, Syria,
Libya, Sudan and South Sudan, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau,
Haiti, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Yemen.
At the top, between 80 and 89, aside from Denmark and New Zealand,
were Luxembourg, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Switzerland,
Singapore, Norway, Sweden and Finland.
“The top performers clearly reveal how transparency supports accountability and can stop corruption,” said Labelle.
“Still, the better performers face issues like state capture,
campaign finance and the oversight of big public contracts which remain
major corruption risks.”
The following is a list of the top- and bottom-ranked 10 nations on
graft watchdog Transparency International’s annual Corruption
Perceptions Index, released on Tuesday.
The index score relates to perceptions of the degree of corruption as
seen by country analysts and business people and ranges between zero,
which is highly corrupt, and 100, which is very clean.
(The equals symbol means nations share the same rank)
TOP TEN=1. Denmark 91
=1. New Zealand 91
=3. Finland 89
=3. Sweden 89
=5. Norway 86
=5. Singapore 86
7. Switzerland 85
8. Netherlands 83
=9. Australia 81
=9. Canada 81
BOTTOM TEN
=168. Syria 17
=168. Turkmenistan 17
=168. Uzbekistan 17
171. Iraq 16
172. Libya 15
173. South Sudan 14
174. Sudan 11
=175. Afghanistan 8
=175. North Korea 8
=175. Somalia 8
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