Bribes galore

Five Arab states among world's 10 most corrupt countries 

By Brian Whitaker

"Five Arab League countries – Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Iraq and Syria – are among the bottom ten in the latest Corruption Perceptions Index issued by Transparency International. 

The United Arab Emirates, in 22nd position worldwide, is narrowly ahead of Qatar as the least corrupt Arab country. Both, incidentally, are ahead of Israel which ranks 36th.

Countries are ranked in the annual survey according to a points scoring system, with 100 as the maximum score. The least corrupt countries this year – Denmark and New Zealand – both scored 91 points. Apart from the UAE and Qatar, all Arab countries scored below 50 points.

In the table below I have compared the rankings of Arab countries in the 2013 survey with 2009, to show changes over the last five years. 

2013	Country	2009	Change
26 28 57 61 63 66 69 77 91 94 94 114 119 127 127 167 168 171 172 174 175	UAE Qatar Bahrain Oman Saudi Arabia Jordan Kuwait Tunisia Morocco Algeria Djibouti Egypt Mauritania Comoros Lebanon Yemen Syria Iraq Libya Sudan Somalia	30 22 46 39 63 49 66 65 89 111 111 111 130 143 130 154 126 176 130 176 180	+4 -6 -11 -22 0 -17 -3 -12 -2 +17 +17 -3 +11 +16 +3 -13 -42 +5 -42 +2 +5
Note: The 2009 survey covered 180 countries – three more than the 2013 survey. This is why Somalia, for example, appears to have improved its ranking while actually remaining at the bottom in both surveys. Neither survey included the Palestinian territories.

 
The most striking observation from this comparison is that Libya and Syria have slipped considerably – presumably as a result of the turmoil there. Yemen, Tunisia and Bahrain are also down, though Egypt's ranking hasn't changed significantly.

Oman and Jordan have slipped 22 and 17 places respectively, for reasons which are unclear. The most improved Arab countries are Algeria and Djibouti.

Transparency International's lead researcher, Finn Heinrich,
told AFP:

"Corruption is very much linked to countries that fall apart, as you see in Libya, Syria, two of the countries that deteriorated the most.

"If you look at the bottom of the list, we also have Somalia there. These are not countries where the government is functioning effectively, and people have to take all means in order to get by, to get services, to get food, to survive."

Because of its nature, corruption is notoriously difficult to measure objectively. Transparency International’s index relies on the assessments of experts and business people – "those who are most directly confronted with the realities of corruption in a country". It focuses specifically on perceptions of corruption among public officials and politicians. 

For further discussion of corruption and its effects in the Arab countries, there's a background article here at al-bab."