International Anticorruption Day (December 9) will be celebrated for the fifth time this year, since the UN Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) was adopted on the same data in 2003 in Merida, Mexico. So far, 126 countries have ratified UNCAC, thus rendering it the first global response to the problem of corruption.

Considering this year’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), Bosnia and Herzegovina faced the new fall on list of countries, and now takes 93rd position, from 180 countries included in the research. In spite of the insignificant progress from the last year, BiH experienced a new fall and is now, according to the Index, the most corrupt country in the region and on the very margins of the European countries list. These results are not surprising, since the state institutions are eroding; political leaders are directly involved in corruption, with the agencies for law implementation and judiciary being silent accomplices. Corruption penetrated all levels and structures of the state, from petty, local scales, through business sector, to the top of the government.

TI BiH undertook a research this year on citizens’ perceptions on corruption before the 2008 Local Elections. According to this research, citizens think that the corruption is most present in political parties, police, entity governments, customs, health services and jurisdiction. The most widespread corruption is petty corruption, on the local level, because citizens contacts mostly with local administrations, but the most harmful economically and socially dangerous is political corruption on highest levels, that is most often seen through privatization processes and operations of state owned enterprises as extended hands of political parties.

It is also important to mention this year’s European Commission’s Progress Report for BiH, which also highlighted that out country made very little progress in the fight against corruption, and especially criticized the pressure of RS Government on TI BiH and its attempt to restrain activities of this organization. The Report emphasizes the lack of political will for the fight against corruption, which made progress in this field in BiH insignificant.

In the occasion of this day, Transparency International BiH, in cooperation with its partner organizations and Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina, organizes a conference whose main topic is the ways of fighting corruption. The Conference will be held on December 11, 2008 in Sarajevo, at the Parliamentary Assembly building, starting at 10.30 a.m.  It is an opportunity for summarizing the state of corruption and the results of anticorruption activities, as well as to discuss about the initiative of Transparency International BiH and the Open Society Fund BiH for adopting the strategic frame for fighting corruption by the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH, which this institution recently accepted and thus showed the necessary level of responsibility for coping with this dangerous phenomenon.