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On behalf of the Transparency International movement, Transparency International UK leads the global programme to confront corruption in the defence and security sector.
Alongside public works and construction and extractive industries, the international defence sector is one of the most prone to corruption and therefore a priority for action.
How the initiative started
Transparency International started in 2000 bring together governments, defence companies, academics, and civil society organisations to consider how best to approach the problem. Conferences were held in Stockholm in February 2000, supported by the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Trade, and in Cambridge in April 2001, supported by DFID in the UK. Both conferences concluded that the climate of corruption in defence was changing, and that the possibilities of change were improving.
Transparency International UK's policy paper "Corruption in the official arms trade Policy Research Paper" (2002) made fourteen recommendations relating to the reform of defence exporting procedures and importing procurement processes, and for the reform of trading rules to remove exemptions for defence companies.
Since late 2003, the UK Government, through the Department for International Development, has provided support to Transparency International UK to take these recommendations forward and to build an international coalition that together can address corruption in the defence sector.
In addition, other Transparency International national chapters have been working to address defence corruption in their own countries.
Current programme activities
In order to make significant changes, a collaboration between key players and a progress must be made simultaneously across the defence system together with :
The Defence Against Corruption programme focuses on the following areas:
- building awareness in defence ministries, companies, and in legislatures that the subject can be tackled effectively. The team meets with a wide variety of government and industry professionals in this sphere, and visits defence ministries on request to discuss actions that they can take. The team publishes a monthly Digest of recent defence corruption issues that are in the news.
- working with defence companies, encouraging them to collaborate internationally so as to build more integrity into international tendering. This includes working with defence exporting governments so that they understand and support the team's work with defence companies.
- working with defence establishments in strengthening anti-corruption measures, particularly involving civil society. Practical work has so far been with Colombia, Latvia, and Poland.
- working with NATO to build integrity in NATO partner countries. The defence team has, with NATO and the Defence Academy of the UK, developed a training module that will be used to develop anti-corruption capacity and competence in NATO accession and partnership countries. The team also works with other international bodies, such as the World Bank, the OECD, and the Africa Development Bank, to build defence anti-corruption knowledge across countries.
- developing tools and techniques, guidance, and monitoring mechanisms for widespread use in the defence sector. The team has focused particularly on developing Defence Integrity Pacts into a mainstream integrity tool for governments and companies alike, spreading knowledge in the area by organising and contributing to conferences on the topic of tackling defence corruption, and building an international community of practitioners in this topic, working across countries, governments and companies.
Working simultaneously with companies, importing governments, and exporting governments
Defence sales operate in environments that are highly tied in to government policy, both in regard to the purchases and to national defence industrial capacity. Making progress in eliminating corruption in defence needs to work simultaneously with the purchasing defence ministry, the exporting government, and the companies bidding for the contract.
In practical terms, purchasing defence ministries need to know that defence companies are making parallel efforts at reform, and that these efforts are being supported by their national government.
Defence companies need to know that importing governments are serious about the integrity of their contracts, and are sincere in their desire to eliminate aberrant behaviour by other bidders.
The Transparency International defence team actively encourages members of governments to meet with defence company officials to discuss ways they can assist each other in improving integrity and procurement procedures.
Increasingly, defence companies view integrity-building reforms as positive. Companies therefore can be catalysts of reform. Many defence companies are now addressing the issue much more directly than they did in the days of the Cold War. The changing legal environment, including the OECD Convention Against Corruption, has also been significant in changing the nature of international business.
Armed forces are usually strong supporters of eliminating corruption. They see the results of corruption in the purchase of inappropriate or inadequate equipment, and budget shortfalls.
The military are often a well respected part of their national society. Transparency International's Global Corruption Barometer reveals that governments and armed forces are highly regarded around the world and are potentially a source of energy for reform. See slide below
Click on picture to view it full-size
Transparency International UK's analysis of the Global Corruption Barometer 2006 (with context and analysis from over 20 Transparency International national chapters and anti-corruption experts from around the world) as they relate to the military can be viewed here.
The TI defence team welcomes suggestions on constructive ways to effect change in the defence sector.
Tools: transparency and independent monitoring
Transparency is an important lever in improving the integrity of organisations. Defence is a sector in which secrecy will often have a role, but it has been overplayed for the most part. There is plenty of scope for increasing the transparency of defence activities, particularly in the areas of defence policy, defence budget, defence spending and defence procurement, which do not compromise national security. Please see tools and applications for examples of how the principle of transparency can be applied in practice. Developing collaboration
Collaborations within and across the company-government-civil society boundaries to tackle corruption are crucial to building lasting change. Examples of such collaborations in practice include:
- Civil society organisations working with defence ministries in relation to defence policy and defence budget, as in Georgia.
- Defence companies across Europe developing a common industry anti-bribery standard.
- The new web-based pan-European Union defence procurement approach being developed by the European Defence Agency.
We believe that there is huge scope for progress through more such collaboration, such as:
- Defence companies working with their defence ministries on a common plan to increase transparency in defence tenders in that market.
- A group of neighbouring governments having a common plan to identify and share information on agents being used in defence procurements in their countries.
- A multi-stakeholder initiative of governments, defence companies, and civil society organisations working together would have huge influence to alter the acceptable norms of defence transparency. This is be similar to what is being achieved in the oil sector through the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).
- Defence establishments have much to gain from establishing cooperation with a group of civil society actors in their country to agree a common plan for ways to improve transparency and oversight of defence policy, defence budgets, and major defence procurements.
Transparency International is experienced at building coalitions for reform
"Large European contractors have embraced the idea of uniform transborder ethics rules ... And Transparency International... has championed the voluntary effort in order to highlight its broader anticorruption agenda"
Wall Street Journal, 17 June 2006
“We reiterate our commitments to the ideals that inspired the work of Transparency International, and express our full confidence and willingness to work together to combat corruption in Mexico and throughout the world”
Vicente Fox, former President of Mexico
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Communities of experts in defence integrity
The community of experts who are capable of analysing the corruption issues in a defence establishment and then planning and executing a reform programme is quite small. Developing this group of experts into a thriving community of defence anti-corruption practitioners is one of the best ways of developing capacity and capability.
International organisations have expertise which is not being shared effectively. The organisation with the greatest expertise in issues of defence integrity is probably NATO, particularly the experts working with defence reform in NATO Partner countries. There is also expertise in the World Bank, particularly among those who work with fradile states. The World Bank recently acknowledged that tackling corruption in defence is a new area that it should pay better attention to. There is expertise in the European Union Military Staffs, in the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in think tanks such as the Geneva Centre for Democratic Control of the Armed Forces (DCAF) and Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP), the African Union, the United Nations, the African Development Bank (AfDB), and national defence academies.
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