The week in corruption, 26 April

This week, we bring news from Tokyo. Ahead of the first G20summit ever to be hosted in Japan, we met up with other civil society organisations for the Civil 20 (C20) Summit. Our goal was to remind G20 leaders of the anti-corruption promises they have made and find shared solutions to shared problems.

Does this sound familiar? That’s no coincidence — we have called on the G20 to deliver on their commitments before. Yet, progress to date is very slow, which is why, once more, we delivered a strong, joint message to the G20: Commitments are a good start, but without concrete action they are empty promises.

Together with our partners at the C20, we issued a special communiqué to raise concerns about the most pressing global threats to societies, including growing economic inequality, corruption and the undermining of democratic governance. We also put together a list of recommendations on how to best address these issues and work towards the Sustainable Development Goals.

Representing the C20 International Advisory Committee, we submitted this ‘Policy Package’ to the chairman of the 2019 G20 summit, the Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe.

The G20 leaders need to use their position to drive progressive reform and urgently adopt measures in key areas such as protection of whistleblowers and mainstreaming of gender perspectives in anti-corruption. We also highlighted how infrastructure sector is especially vulnerable to corruption and outlined a way forward.

This can only work through improved accountability of the G20 Anti-Corruption Working Group, a vivid dialogue between all working groups and meaningful engagement with civil society.

You, too, can call on global leaders to deliver on their commitments by tweeting #G20takeaction.

What do you think? Let us know @anticorruption!