Nathaniel
In the past month, Global Integrity has hosted Dialogue workshops in Tanzania and Uganda, which bring together civil society, government, media and aid donors to chart a course for future local anti-corruption efforts. The conclusions of those workshops are here:
Global Integrity Dialogues: Tanzania
Global Integrity Dialogues: Uganda
Showing posts with label dialogues. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dialogues. Show all posts
Monday, June 9, 2008
Road Maps for Anti-Corruption in Africa
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Talking Corruption in Dar es Salaam
Global Integrity's Nathaniel Heller reports from Tanzania on the latest Global Integrity Dialogues workshop. The Dialogues are a new offering from Global Integrity that gather key local stakeholders to identify problems and plot future anti-corruption efforts.
Nathaniel writes, via email:
In collaboration with the Partnership for Transparency Fund, Global Integrity held a Dialogue workshop in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania yesterday. We had an excellent turnout with more than a dozen NGO and government respresentatives participating. The group flagged a number of key issues -- notably poor access to government information -- as priorities for follow-up advocacy and potential funding support from PTF. Formal details summarizing the workshop will follow at our new Dialogues page, which houses the results of these in-country stakeholder discussions. We are very happy with the results of the initial Dialogue events and hope to continue building on them.
I had a reality check moment last night after the workshop ended. I stayed up late in the hotel bar with what seemed like 500 other soccer fans to watch the Champions League final between Manchester United and Chelsea (which Man United eventually won on penalty kicks, keeping me up until 2:00 a.m. local time). At the end of the first half, emotions were running high in the room following Lampard's equalizer that brought Chelsea back to even terms when...the entire city block's power went out for about two minutes. No bad weather, no storms, nothing else to explain it...except the rampant inefficiency and corruption in the Tanzanian power sector that continues to plague the country. Our colleague Sebastian Sanga's 2007 Reporter's Notebook for Tanzania examines the power crisis at length.
More pictures from the event.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Talking Corruption in Timor-Leste
In the last month, Global Integrity's Nathaniel Heller and I have been traveling in the South Pacific, talking with local experts about the results of the Global Integrity Report: 2007. In Timor-Leste and Vanuatu, we convened government officials, civil society activists, foreign donors and journalists to talk about corruption and governance. This is what we learned. 
Our first stop was Timor-Leste, a country that is very nearly starting from zero in its efforts to create the institutions necessary for democracy. Despite this, and despite the many tragedies of its history, both recent and past, I was left with a sense of cautious optimism for the future of the new nation. I spoke to so many people in Timor-Leste who had a sense of purpose and determination about the work they were doing.
Still, there is so much work to be done. Infrastructure is poor; we planned our workshop by candlelight after the power cut out during a heavy rain. Internally displaced persons (IDP) camps are an inescapable feature of the capital -- muddy, crowded lots of big tents with aid agency logos on them. In a very real way, Timor-Leste is starting over.
To give some context, consider this vignette: the justice system has recently been converted from speaking Tetum (a local language) to Portuguese (the language favored by the resistance movement). However, only some 5 percent of the population speaks Portuguese, causing a shortage of qualified lawyers and judges. An informal tally lists the total number of judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys working in the country at under 30 people. There is only one functioning court house outside of the capital of Dili. And of the eight or so prosecutors available to try cases in Timor-Leste, three of them were still living in IDP camps. Not exactly an ideal working environment.
But work goes on. Earlier this month, Global Integrity and AusAID convened a workshop of government officials, advocates, donors and journalists to discuss corruption and governance in Timor-Leste and to plot a course for the future of anti-corruption policy. Global Integrity's role in this discussion is not to provide answers or recommendations. Instead, we bring a process of structured reflection and an evidence-based dialogue that enables local stakeholders to identify areas for improvement and establish their own priorities for reform.
The results of this process are published here:
Timor Leste Workshop conclusions
Pictures from our trip are here.
Photos: (cc) Jonathan Werve
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