Western Balkans – the laws are there but what about implementation?
This article hits the nail on the head – so all the laws, regulations and bodies are there, but corruption is still there and sometimes doesn’t seem to slow down. The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime is hosting a webinar that addresses these issues. They will try to answer the issues tied to the fact that “anti-corruption agencies face chronic challenges, including insufficient resources, weak inter-institutional cooperation, and a lack of institutional safeguards. These structural shortcomings undermine both integrity and effectiveness, and risk entrenching a culture of impunity.”
Why should we care about these issues? Many times, this is the cry of the donor and the government officials who would be very happy to rid themselves of these agencies and laws. The biggest issue in anti-corruption is that everyone wants instant results, they want to show that yesterday there was extreme corruption and today, the corrupt government officials are all in jail and corruption has been solved. It does not work that way, like all issues which are based on the behavior of governmental officials, we can’t expect overnight. There is an area where we have more instant successes, when services are digitalized, there are quicker wins, but grand corruption very rarely comes under digital solutions, and therefore governments need to rely, as much as they can, on clear legislation, political will and good enforcement mechanisms. If you have all three, you are now in heaven and you don’t need anything more. But, unless you are in heaven, you need to constantly work on these areas. Even small victories in legal implementation is important, and these results should not be diminished when talking about them, and realistically these minor successes should be celebrated, reminding everyone that behavioral change as well as enforcement is tough.
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