Fighting Corruption: The Missing Link

Around the world, religious leaders have often been at the forefront of fighting corruption, but you would never know that from looking around the International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC) held recently in Athens.

For 25 years, this biannual conference has brought together people working to fight bribery, extortion, fraud and other evils. Initially a rather small gathering focused on law enforcement, the event today brings in a wide swath of public and private actors - business leaders, heads of state, community organizers, media, government enforcers and investigators. Notice a certain group missing?

The recent IACC in Athens was the largest yet - over 1500 people from 135 countries, and its agenda the broadest: climate change, human rights, globalization, and security, you name it. It drew stellar leaders, among them Festus Mogae, Botswana's respected former president, and Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland who speaks wherever and whenever she can to press the cause of human rights.

My mission, both as part of the IACC planning group and organizer of a workshop, was to explore why, in this large and eclectic gathering, the presence of religious leaders was, to put it mildly, minimal.

The Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartolomeo, was part of the opening and spoke to a recurring theme: societies everywhere have lost moral values and may find them again if they look to the core principles of religion. But the Patriarch and his coterie of bishops left after his speech, leaving as far as I could find only one declared religious leader: Reverend Geo Sung Kim from South Korea, leader of Transparency Korea and an ordained Presbyterian minister.

Despite the IACC's secular culture and approach, I was encouraged that there seems to be active interest in building stronger bridges to the religious world. Gesine Schwan, a candidate for Germany's presidency, spoke at my panel, arguing that the compelling importance of public integrity calls for alliances that bring in faith institutions. Reverend Kim spoke to the great potential of religious leaders to mobilize the civil society understanding and voice that are the essence of changing a culture of corruption. The Senegalese and Kuwaiti chapters of Transparency International, a nonprofit that fights corruption, are assembling citations from the Koran and Hadith that highlight the evils of both financial corruption and abuse of power. Several Africans attested to the fact that without religious institutions and leaders fully on board, the anti-corruption fight was futile. Peter Eigen, TI's founder, and Cobus de Swardt agreed that the time had come to explore how to translate what seems an obvious alliance into reality.

Corruption is a nasty, depressing phenomenon. It hurts most grievously those who are poor and vulnerable. It is present in all societies and it is not easy to combat. It's a dangerous and unpopular business: the most sobering session I attended catalogued a litany of horrible pressures felt by investigators in Australia, Austria and the U.K., and the IACC passed a resolution of support for Nigeria's courageous former anti-corruption investigator, Nuhu Ribadu, who faces personal threats. Corruption erodes trust and is part and parcel of the disillusionment many feel with politicians, governments, and the capitalist system.

The integrity movement is a growing example of the power that comes from linking citizen groups across the world. By banding together, sharing experience, and naming and shaming bad performance, these alliances can make real headway. But there's a very long way to go, and the current financial crisis brings that home starkly.

It's a sad commentary that the movement has not courted more actively its natural allies in the faith world, and that religious leaders have tended to veer away from the painstaking work that fighting corruption involves. I'm heartened that the corruption busters are reaching out to religious leaders but it's still too timid for my taste.

So: more power to those who have faith in integrity and more faith to those who argue that religious voices can be part of the solution.