U4 Issue 2013:4
The role of civil society in the UNCAC review process: Moving beyond compliance?
www.U4.no
Development partners did not play a role in the IRM except in Bangladesh, where they were part of a much broader anti-corruption effort launched in 2007 around a voluntary UNCAC Compliance and Gap Analysis. Donors’ absence from the IRM process was noted even when they showed an apparent interest in the results, as evidenced by support for separate compliance assessments (e.g., in Zambia).
factor. The public sometimes showed a keener interest in existing regional anti-corruption mechanisms, such as the follow-up mechanism for the Inter-American Convention against Corruption (MESICIC), which was of concern in Brazil. The existence of multiple review regimes also was viewed by some respondents as a duplication of efforts. Creating synergies with the regional instruments emerged as an unanswered need.
Key issues hampering civil society participation in the IRM
Similarly, the IRM was not integrated into existing national anti-corruption efforts in the countries surveyed. This observation holds even for Bangladesh, the sole country studied where the domestic anti-corruption agenda was built on an UNCAC Compliance and Gap Analysis, and no conceptual or methodological differences stood in the way.
The evidence collected in this study suggests that authorities are not deliberately excluding civil society from the IRM process. Rather, a number of practical challenges hinder participation.
A lack of expertise within civil society organisations was cited by a number of respondents as one of the main reasons for not including CSOs, particularly in the SelfAssessment. The issue was not their levels of competence in general, but rather the perceived lack of fit between the topics covered in the UNCAC chapters under review (law enforcement and international cooperation) and the subject-matter expertise of most CSOs. There also sometimes exists a bias regarding the type of activities suited for civil society participation, with CSOs seen as more able to carry out conferences and awareness campaigns than to engage in more “technical” anti-corruption activities.
A limited time frame that did not allow for thorough preparation was the overall principal reason for poor initial information sharing, according to state authorities. The same reason was given for excluding civil society from preparation of the Self-Assessment, which is a demanding exercise in inter-institutional cooperation among state agencies that leaves no time for a national review. A lack of public awareness about the IRM, and about the UNCAC more generally, emerged as an equally salient factor. The main reason for lack of information was that state institutions did not notify in-country stakeholders about the process. Most civil society organisations (CSOs) surveyed, however, also did not themselves follow up on developments at the UNCAC Secretariat.
The barrier to civil society technical contributions, in fact, was less lack of expertise than lack of access to information. This challenge was reported across the board, even in countries where CSOs were invited by state institutions to participate in the process. Even the responsible state institutions encountered difficulties in some cases in obtaining relevant information from other state institutions.
A related issue was lack of public interest in the process, which appears to be both a cause and a consequence of low awareness. In some cases the IRM was overshadowed by other processes of greater interest to the public, such as Croatia’s accession to the European Union (EU). In other cases, notably Bangladesh, the public was not responsive despite outreach efforts. The overall consequence has been to dampen civil society demand for information in all the countries surveyed.
The format of the tools and the process also appeared to be an obstacle. The SelfAssessment was seen as a rigid instrument, too focused on the achievement of benchmarks and not allowing for deeper analysis. Some respondents found its online interface difficult
The existence of multiple review regimes, especially in Europe and the Americas, was a vi