Why Corruption Matters

From Berlin via videoconference

Speaker:

Peter Eigen, Founder and Director, Transparency International.

Professor Dr Peter Eigen is a lawyer by training. He has worked in economic development for 25 years, mainly as a World Bank manager of programmes in Africa and Latin America. Under Ford Foundation sponsorship, he provided legal and technical assistance to the governments of Botswana and Namibia, and taught law at the universities of Frankfurt and Georgetown. From 1988 to 1991 he was the Director of the Regional Mission for Eastern Africa of the World Bank. He is founder and chairman of Transparency International (TI).

From 1999 to 2001 Peter Eigen was Adjunct Lecturer at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is also a member of the Advisory Council of the Center for International Development at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is a Trustee of Crown Agents Foundation as well as a member of the Advisory Commission on the UN, the Global Compact and the Commission on Globalization of the State of the World Forum.

In 2000, he received the award of Honorary Doctor of the Open University. In September 2001, he joined the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as Visiting Scholar while teaching at Johns Hopkins University/ SAIS. In 2004, Peter Eigen received the Reader’s Digest Award ‘European of the Year 2004’ and became an Honorary Professor of Political Science of the Freie Universität, Berlin.

Background on Transparency International:

Transparency International the only international nongovernmental organisation devoted to combating corruption, brings civil society, business, and governments together in a powerful global coalition. TI, through its International Secretariat and more than 85 independent national chapters around the world, works at both the national and international level to curb both the supply and demand of corruption. In the international arena, TI raises awareness about the damaging effects of corruption, advocates policy reform, works towards the implementation of multilateral conventions and subsequently monitors compliance by governments, corporations and banks. At the national level, chapters work to increase levels of accountability and transparency, monitoring the performance of key institutions and pressing for necessary reforms in a non-party political manner.

TI does not expose individual cases (that is the work of journalists, many of whom are members of TI chapters). Rather, in an effort to make long-term gains against orruption, TI focuses on prevention and reforming systems. A principal tool in the fight against corruption is access to information. It is in this spirit that we offer this web site to everybody with an interest in the fight against corruption. We hope it will make a valuable contribution to assessing the gains made in recent years, and to contemplating the challenges that still lie ahead.