15 March 2009.

2009 is a crucial year for the UN Convention against Corruption (UNCAC). Its 133 States Parties will decide how they will keep track of progress made to implement this landmark anti-corruption convention. In order to achieve this, they will meet in November 2009 in Doha, Qatar, to decide how a review mechanism for the UNCAC will operate. Several preparatory meetings are being held prior to Doha, where key negotiations are taking place. Timely engagement of civil society with governments is needed to make sure the November CoSP adopts an effective, transparent and impartial mechanism to review progress.

Civil society organisations are calling for an effective, transparent and impartial review mechanism -anything less would undermine UNCAC’s credibility and with it all efforts to successfully fight corruption. Read more to see what an effective mechanism should include, as recommended by civil society organisations. Key requirements for an effective mechanism include:

• A transparent and impartial mechanism: with multiple sources of information, including civil society, the private sector and academia; transparency though the publication of reports and country visits by experts carrying our the review.
• Funding from the regular UN budget or assessed contributions, supplementing the budget as needed by voluntary contributions.
• Cooperation with other review programmes of other anti corruption conventions, to avoid duplicating efforts
• Greater technical assistance to help countries implement the measures envisaged by the Convention

The UNCAC Coalition urges all interested civil society organisations to bring these recommendations to their governments’ attention and engage in a constructive dialogue lto achieve the best possible outcome at the Conference of States Parties in November 2009.

The Coalition is open to organisations interested in pursuing the common goal of ensuring the timely adoption of an effective review mechanism and implementation of UNCAC’s provisions.