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This is the World Bank's blog on governance and anti-corruption. It aims at providing a space for debate and knowledge sharing on this critical field of development. | Learn more...

Middle East and North Africa

Arab Human Development Report 2009: Will improvement in Voice and Rights come from within?

Submitted by Kaufmann on Mon, 2009-08-03 20:57

A few weeks ago Obama went to Ghana and delivered a major speech to Africa.  He spoke candidly about the dire governance challenges faced by many countries in the continent.  I also noted that Obama was not explicit about the implications of his message for rethinking donor aid strategies to the continent. Hopefully such revamp in donor aid will be part of the follow through of his speech, if there is follow through.

A month before his momentous trip to Accra to address the Ghanian Parliament, Obama had gone to Cairo to deliver a major address to the Arab world.  It is a speech, which is also worth studying in depth.  But it was more muted and unfocused, refraining from being too direct on the governance and freedom deficits in the Arab world. For one, Obama is not seen as a prodigal son there, in contrast with how he is regarded by Africa...

"140 chars is a novel when you're being shot at"

Submitted by Tanya on Wed, 2009-07-01 09:20

-courtesy: @chadelund Quote of the day- #iranelection

In a previous blog entry, I wrote about how Web 2.0 is improving governance, with or without the help of the government in question, and irrespective of whether the country is developed or not.

Throwing traditional wisdom to the winds, the Web 2.0 story is continuing to unfold in a way that was not predicted by researchers and experts of the development community and outside.   When I last wrote my blog entry on this issue, it was specifically to explore how Bangladeshi citizens, independently of the government, NGOs, or media were sharing their experience of the BDR mutiny and its results.  This shone a light into the situation in Bangladesh to many who would have been otherwise left in the dark about the BDR revolt.

Then Iran happened.  The situation in Iran has many interesting parallels with Bangladesh and the BDR revolt – both related to the citizen-fuelled proliferation of news, occurring independently of the Government, and in Iran, even inspite of the opposition of the Government.

When blogging becomes an issue: worst places to be a blogger

Submitted by Alfredo on Tue, 2009-05-19 18:29

Blogs have changed the way people put into practice concepts such as voice and freedom of expression.  In a matter of minutes, anyone who has access to a computer with internet connection can create a blog and start posting ideas, experiences, opinions, pictures and videos that will be become available to more than 1.5 billion internet users in the world.

Also, blogs' features enable two-way communication and interaction between users, very different to the "static" dynamic of traditional websites. Most important, people can do all of these things at no cost.

However, the expansion of the blogosphere has also triggered negative reactions, especially in environments where censorship and control of information still prevail. Touching on several of these reactions, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) launched a special report in which it highlights the "10 worst countries to be a blogger."

 

The human faces of corruption

Submitted by Edouard on Tue, 2008-09-16 11:51
I was in Yemen three weeks ago, in part to lay the groundwork for a national diagnostics survey of governance and anticorruption in the health sector. Its focus was to be on bribery and informal payments.

GAC Country Diagnostics: a tool for partner countries serious about tackling the challenge of corruption

Submitted by Mark on Fri, 2008-08-01 17:34
When Pierre Nkurunziza came to power as president of Burundi in late 2005, he pledged to take serious action to address his country’s poor record on governance.  Burundi had considerable problems with official and petty corruption, and he asked the World Bank Institute (WBI) for support in developing an action plan for tackling these challenges.

 

Starting last year, WBI, working in partnership with the World Bank country team and the Government of Belgium, assisted Burundi in carrying out its first nationwide governance and anti-corruption (GAC) diagnostic survey.  Applying the same methodology that it has used in more than two dozen other countries, WBI helped Burundi create a multi-stakeholder steering group of government and civil society members. This group’s aim was to initiate and lead a process of identifying Burundi’s specific governance problems and designing an approach to address them.