Int’l Anti-Corruption Day: Mideast Still Suffers Notable Corruption
Syria and Yemen among world’s most corrupt countries
It is now more than a decade since citizens around the Middle East took to the streets in protest of – among other things – government corruption. Yet, as the world observes International Anti-Corruption Day, corruption not only continues to plague the region but may be on the rise.
A 2020 report by Transparency International (TI), a leading global nongovernmental organization dedicated to fighting corruption worldwide, showed that corruption was more prevalent in the Middle East as a region than it was globally.
In its 2020 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), which is generated by aggregating “data from a number of different sources that provide perceptions among business-people and country experts of the level of corruption in the public sector,” the average score of Middle Eastern countries was 39, compared with 43 globally. Additionally, some countries in the region landed at the bottom of the index globally. Out of 180 countries included, Syria was placed third from the bottom, with a score of 14. Yemen followed it, scoring 15. The index was topped by Denmark and New Zealand, who both received a score of 88.
The UAE and Qatar ranked highest in the region, with the first scoring 71 and the second 63. However, according to TI, despite the relatively high scores of countries in the Gulf, the absence of sufficient regulation of their private sector makes them enablers of corruption elsewhere.
A different report 2019 report by TI revealed a worrying increase in the number of citizens in Middle Eastern countries that felt corruption was on the rise. According to the 2019 Global Corruption Barometer, 65% of the citizens questioned in the six countries that were sampled felt that the corruption in their home countries had become worse in the previous 12 months. 66% felt that their governments’ treatment of the matter was insufficient. Notably, the organization claims that emergency regulations enacted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic caused a further setback for the regional battle against corruption.
Judge (ret.) Nili Arad, chair of Transparency International Israel, translated the index scores into more tangible terms. “You have to differentiate between a corrupt state and a state that suffers from corruption,” Arad told The Media Line, “generally in the CPI, countries that scored 50 or lower are considered corrupt states. Now, what is the difference between a corrupt state and one in which there is corruption? A corrupt state is a state in which the systems don’t function. First of all, it isn’t a democratic country, and its legal system isn’t an independent legal system, at best. In some corrupt states, the legal system doesn’t function at all.”
Thirteen of 18 countries included in the Middle East by TI scored less than 50. These include, in addition to the bottom tier mentioned above, Egypt, Iran, Bahrain and Jordan.
“A country in which the rule of law” prevails, continued Arad, “which, in my eyes, is one of the pillars of a democratic country, is by definition not a corrupt state, but a state coping with corruption and its different faces”.
Among the countries ranked, Israel has perhaps had the most notable corruption scandal in the last year. Former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, after some 10 years at the helm, is now facing corruption charges in court. However, in TI’s CPI ranking, the small country received a score of 60.
Hiddai Negev, who heads the policy and legislation department at the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, told The Media Line that “a democratic country, and one that wishes to survive, is tested not on whether there is [or isn’t] governmental corruption, but on its willingness to fight that corruption.”
“The police and the state attorney are doing their job,” Negev said, “I think that the fact that prime ministers are investigated here, that prime ministers are indicted, as are ministers and mayors – I think that that is a good and positive norm.”
Negev, though, is worried at the changes in public attitude towards issues of corruption recently. Netanyahu’s trial, even before a word was spoken in court, has managed to tear Israel into two camps, as evinced by the protests and counterprotests concerning the former premier, which took place in front of the official residence for months on end. Speaking of Netanyahu’s supporters, some of whom have doubted the legality of the procedure against the politician, Negev said that when the public thinks “corrupt governmental actions are OK, or the opposite, that someone is building and pinning cases, that mainly harms that battle against governmental corruption.”
Increased transparency could improve public trust in all governmental bodies, including the legal system, and Arad said that improving government transparency – as their name indicates – is their central focus. “We focus greatly on the matter of transparency – more than the fight against corruption – and this derives from an ideological conception that by furthering transparency, you reduce corruption,” she said.
