Suchergebnisse

As Australia's closest neighbours, countries in the South Pacific directly engage Australia's national interests. A number of these nations such as Fiji, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea continue to face significant challenges, including law and order problems, weak institutions, economic decline, lack of employment opportunities, social dysfunction which are heightened by the serious corruption within Government agencies and civil society. Left unattended, these problems present a significant security challenge to Australia and possible destabilisation in the broader region. Such difficulties could also have international implications. Weak governance, poor security infrastructure and general instability make the South Pacific a potentially attractive base for international criminal operations such as drug trafficking, weapons trading, money laundering, and even identity fraud. Developing solutions to curb corruption which can contributes to these serious problems is the purpose of this research report. Corruption in the South Pacific is endemic and infiltrates every level of society . It is present in parliaments, political parties, governments, the public and private sectors and the civil service. However, for the purpose of research such a wide and complexity area of study needs a focus . The focus for this research report is corruption within law enforcement agencies in Fiji, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea A recent global survey of popular opinion in 60 countries conducted by Transparency International (TI), the international anti-corruption Non- Government Organisation (NGO), offers a broad spectrum of data on common experiences of corruption, including which institutions most frequently demand bribes, where citizens see the greatest degree of corruption, and how they see both the future development of corruption and their governments' efforts to eradicate it. It found that the police were the third sector affected most by corruption. See table below. TI's Managing Director, Cobus de Swardt confirms, "The Barometer reveals the police and the judiciary in many countries around the world are part of a cycle of corruption, demanding bribes from citizens. This troubling finding means that corruption is interfering with the basic right to equal treatment before the law."2 The law enforcement sector was the most frequent source of bribery, while 25 per cent of respondents who came in contact with the police were asked to pay a bribe. Grand or political corruption in political parties and parliament is cited as the biggest problem regarding corruption, it is also the type of corruption only present at the highest levels of society. In developing counties like Fiji, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea where poverty is widespread, the majority of the population do not fall into this elitist category. Petty or administrative corruption is a grave problem, and is the type of corruption that severely affects ordinary people' s dai ly lives. This includes the taking of bribes for licences, traffic violations, hastened document processing and minor criminal offensives. These are the types of corruption most prevalent in law enforcement agencies, rather then extreme corruption. Poor families are hit hardest by demands for bribes in developing countries, according to Transparency international's Global Corruption Barometer 2007.4 Corruption in the South Pacific Islands commonly takes the form of nepotism amongst wantoks 5 in the selection of employees for jobs and promotions. The cultural dilemma whereby the official role of public and civil servants are interwoven with and often compromised by their traditional obligations is a intrinsic problem. This impact of culture on public duty works both ways, but it is more worrying when the tendency is for the official to exercise his/her influence or use his /her position for personal or family gain. This is evident from the unclear guidelines on the receiving of traditional gifts by public and civil servants. Monitoring of gift registers are left to the various department's accounting officers, and are not closely scrutinized in the mistaken belief that good will and high sense of moral duty prevail amongst all public officials. 6 Poor role models, inadequate training, irregular wage provisions, and insufficient and poorly resourced anti-corruption institutions to combat corruption are also a contributing factor to corruption in South Pacific police forces. There has been public outcry about the abuse of public office of senior figures for personal gain, however little or no remedial action has been taken to rectify such malpractices. Equally, a commitment at the management and leadership levels as well as insignificant emphasis placed by governments on attacking maladministration at various levels of the bureaucracy and civil service has meant that the endemic problem remains without procedures and systems to promote good governance and accountability. The key recommendations of the report are: • Encouraging strong integrity, accountability and transparency of police officers through improved and specific training programs. • An improved and regular pay for law enforcement officers based on a number of factors, including a merit system. • Immediate implementation of an independent and properly resourced anticorruption agency such as the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC). • To attract and maintain highly trained and skilled corruption investigators. • Education for the wider public on corruption matters to change attitudes towards corruption making it an unacceptable practice. • Promoting a 'watch' and' be watched' environment. • Increasing accountability and transparency by reforms of regulations that currently provide opportunities for corruption.

The rise of food security up international political, societal and academic agendas has led to increasing interest in novel means of improving primary food production and reducing waste. There are however, also many 'post-farm gate' activities that are critical to food security, including processing, packaging, distributing, retailing, cooking and consuming. These activities all affect a range of important food security elements, notably availability, affordability and other aspects of access, nutrition and safety. Addressing the challenge of universal food security, in the context of a number of other policy goals (e.g. social, economic and environmental sustainability), is of keen interest to a range of UK stakeholders but requires an up-to-date evidence base and continuous innovation. An exercise was therefore conducted, under the auspices of the UK Global Food Security Programme, to identify priority research questions with a focus on the UK food system (though the outcomes may be broadly applicable to other developed nations). Emphasis was placed on incorporating a wide range of perspectives ('world views') from different stakeholder groups: policy, private sector, non-governmental organisations, advocacy groups and academia. A total of 456 individuals submitted 820 questions from which 100 were selected by a process of online voting and a three-stage workshop voting exercise. These 100 final questions were sorted into 10 themes and the 'top' question for each theme identified by a further voting exercise. This step also allowed four different stakeholder groups to select the top 7-8 questions from their perspectives. Results of these voting exercises are presented. It is clear from the wide range of questions prioritised in this exercise that the different stakeholder groups identified specific research needs on a range of post-farm gate activities and food security outcomes. Evidence needs related to food affordability, nutrition and food safety (all key elements of food security) featured highly in the exercise. While there were some questions relating to climate impacts on production, other important topics for food security (e.g. trade, transport, preference and cultural needs) were not viewed as strongly by the participants.