Corruption and governance are key issues challenging nations all over the world. In many developing as well as developed countries, conflicts arise and governments are changed on issues of corruption and governance. As people living in the South we are aware of the reality, pain and destruction which bribery and other forms of corruption in public sector transactions cause in our communities, as well as to our national political and economic life.

The issues of corruption and governance have also been an underlying and crosscutting theme in development co-operation and financing for development, especially for poor, heavily indebted developing countries. In many of these countries, corrupt dictatorships have been immediately responsible for driving their respective countries to the quagmire of debt crisis.

The core issue of governance and corruption lies in the way power is structured and exercised. In many countries, structures and processes prevent the democratic and egalitarian management of power. Corruption occurs where power is abused for personal or exclusive and elitist groups gains or profits.

Recently, however, these issues have become prominent concerns in official circles of economic and development cooperation. In the post-Washington consensus structural adjustment programs, corruption and governance conditionalities have become the favorite of the World Bank and other international financing institutions and donor countries as a form of “positive conditionality”. Corollarily, many conferences have been focusing on the issue.

As such, corruption and governance have been turned into official issues for ‘experts’ and government ‘policing’ agencies to deal with. Left in the hands of the powers that be, corruption and governance issues have become a powerful tool for the continued exercise and abuse of power against the marginalized countries of the South and their peoples. It is no wonder that many grassroots organizations consider corruption and governance as another agenda and instrument of oppression of the South.

Thus many if not all civil society organizations working on urgent national and grassroots issues either do not see the need to get involved with corruption and governance issues or find it difficult to relate to the work being done on corruption and governance, or feel disempowered to deal with the issues. Many of them see corruption and governance as part of structural issues in their own countries, as the product of undemocratic elites that remain subservient to their past colonial masters and other foreign interests.

This only underscores the importance of corruption and governance as people’s issues for development and democracy. We must not allow these issues to be turned into instruments for the continued domination and marginalization of countries and peoples of the South.

Furthermore, the challenges of corruption and governance have intensified along with the economic and social crisis which accompanied and intensifies with globalization. The people of the South must explicitly take ownership of the problem, expose and oppose the national and international structures that perpetuate the problems of corruption and governance, and explicitly integrate these issues in our campaigns and struggles in a proactive manner.

Whilst acknowledging that the forms and dimensions and levels of corruption ranges from what happens in families through what happens in our national life, we are particularly concerned about the inherent and fundamental deficiencies in the global political and economic governance rendering the process of globalization a corrupt and immoral process per se.

In the long run, the main drivers of undemocratic social structures and processes of governance and the main beneficiaries of corruption are the multinational companies, powerful nations and Northern governments as well as the international financial institutions, for their complicity in shaping these post-colonial structures and for being corrupt as well.

It is ironic that these institutions and players are the current drivers in the international and global anti-corruption campaigns. As such the current anti-corruption agenda is, by and large, a Northern-driven process primarily serving the interests of the North at the expense of the people and countries of the South.

This wider context and forms of corruption as well as the players in these areas of corruption is currently being obscured and allowed to be obscured by powers and institutions that are the drivers of the current anti-corruption campaigns. As such corruption and governance issues become yet another way in which the forces of globalization wield power, and corruptly so for their interest and gains, at the expense of the vast majority of people of the world. Our neglect of the issue provides room for this dynamic to take place.

We are individuals, organizations and institutions mostly from various countries of the South concerned about issues confronting countries and communities in the South. We are seriously concerned about the way the corruption and governance discourse is currently being developed, and that peoples organizations and movements from the South in conjunction with partners in the North need to engage these issues with greater levels of seriousness and in a more systematic and programmatic manner. We strongly believe that a strong global campaign be launched to mobilize people’s movements in the South and partners in the North in a grassroots people’s struggle against corruption and for genuine participatory democracy.

We urge national and international people’s organizations and movements to:

• Express support for and join in a concerted international grassroots campaign to unmask the global structures and systems of corruption and the perpetrators and beneficiaries of global corruption.
• Consolidate a South perspective and joint action against global and globalize corruption.
• Integrate the issues related to global corruption and governance in different popular movements, campaigns and programmes and projects including the fight against corruption in our own countries.
• Ascertain in our different areas of work and campaigns where and how this global and northern driven corruption agenda is manifested and unmask it.
• Identify different means whereby our concerns could best be addressed.
• Unmask and resist individuals, organizations, institutions, governments, companies (even civil society organizations) who promote this agenda be that by default or by design.
• Critically engage existing anti-corruption drives on national and international levels.