Bosnia and Herzegovina slipped in rankings in the 2008 Global Integrity Report, which collects field reports and data related to good governance and anti-corruption institutions in 58 countries. The 2008 report also includes the Global Integrity Index, which offers quantitative assessments of each country based on a set of more than 300 indicators. The report is the result of cooperation between Global Integrity, an international non-profit organization specializing in monitoring corruption, and hundreds of researchers and journalists. Each country assessment consists of a qualitative report, or Reporter's Notebook, written by local experts, and a scorecard calculated from data compiled by Global Integrity. As was the case last year, journalists from the Center for Investigative Reporting in Sarajevo (CIN) provided the 2008 Report's Notebook for Bosnia and Herzegovina, which noted serious set backs in efforts against corruption. CIN's assessment cited government attacks on the NGO Transparency International, the bleak results of a survey on citizens' perceptions on corruption in the country, and cases of bloated government contracts and murky privatizations of state industries.
These conclusions are supported by Bosnia and Herzegovina's inclusion on the report's list of “backsliders,” or countries whose overall score decreased since their last assessment. Bosnia and Herzegovina's score dropped six points from that in the 2007 report.
While countries in Eastern and Central Europe continue to score high on the Index, including Romania and Bulgaria, each of whom ranked within the top five, the countries of the Western Balkans in particular have shown little improvement. Both Serbia and Montenegro were included in the report's “Grand Corruption Watch List” of countries that face an exceptional threat of large-scale theft of public resources.
Among the key global developments noted in the 2008 report are the continued prevalence of poor regulation of political financing, the lack of transparency and citizen access to government information throughout the countries of the Arab world, and the still worsening situation within the Horn of Africa, where Somalia received the worst score of any country since the reports began being issued in 2004.
More results from the report can be viewed at the website http://report.globalintegrity.org.
--Michael Mehen
BiH Slips in Global Integrity Score
Published: 19 February 2009
By Michael
