Each year natural disasters take the lives of many, destroy infrastructures leaving many homeless and victimize millions globally. However, disasters bring together hearts of millions of people round the world under the common goal of humanity to serve the victims.The, tragic event of earthquake in Nepal has triggered outpouring of humanitarian aid to support the quake victims. Yet, all too often this well-intended bighearted philanthropic act fails to render corresponding results on the ground due to rampant corruption. Particularly, corruption caused by the urgency to distribute aid leads to procedural carelessness and weak documentation thereby opening the doors for the corrupt to cut corners when it comes to transparency on spending and accountability.
Breakdown of accountability provides devious public officials with golden prospect to draw off money and supplies from aids. Furthermore, immediate and ultimate natural disaster response is primarily the government duty and responsibility. Public officials in charge of relief and reconstruction tasks are provided opening to exploit victim's desperation and embezzle donations.
Additional reason for the failure in maintaining accountability is the huge volume of humanitarian aid and resources support and the poor absorptive ability of governments, local partners, aid agencies, and national and international NGOs.
The urgency to tackle corruption in disaster aid has emerged as a pressing need. In response to the earthquake, so far, huge amount of cash and relief goods have been pledged. The challenge for the government is the ethical, transparent and accountable administration of this magnitude of aid. Indubitably slackness in handling the aid creates high corruption risks.
Delivering relief and reconstruction supplies in geographically challenging environments is definitely a difficult task. The delivery of huge amounts of resources into earthquake affected areas where the local institutions have been damaged, record keeping systems have been destroyed and proper distribution mechanism has not been set amplifies power discrepancies and increases opportunities for corruption.
At present the government lacks proper strategy to fight corruption in the distribution of humanitarian aid. This lack of efficacious strategy prompts unequal and unfair distribution of resources that creates chaos in the affected areas. Unless fighting corruption becomes the priority object of the government relief, reconstruction and rehabilitation will not reap expected outcomes.
In every system, whether public or private, there exists adequate room for corrupt officials to exploit the system. Moreover, a fragile state like ours provides even more opportunities for irregularities and corruption. Given this, there is a dire necessity to establish a Foreign Aid Transparency Center, to trace humanitarian aid and donations. It is high time that the aid sent for the victims are utilized for their welfare. For this, effective tracking mechanism of foreign aid is necessary that obliges the organizations to transparently utilize aids received by them.
Trust in public officials at every level and sector has been severely undermined due to rampant corruption. It is worse in private sectors where hardly any mechanism exists to make their actions and inactions accountable. In such a scenario, there is an urgent call now for us to monitor the movement of foreign aid funds by the government and the private sector in order to ensure that these funds reach the victims and the survivors of the earthquake.
To curb corruption and lessen waste in disaster relief and reconstruction aid, it is necessary to stress on our feeling of ownership towards the motherland; professionalism, ethics, community-driven and participatory processes; mutual coordination among concerned stakeholders, rejection of politicization and commercialization of aid, transparency of aid flows; financial safeguards and administrative capacity; oversight monitoring, and evaluation along with effective anti-corruption enforcement and complaint handling. When applying these principles, contributors and recipient country governments ought to also contemplate techniques to enable regulated giving rather than one-off donations. If required, the government needs to decline aids and yield steps to improve and develop the overall level of governance.
Certainly corruption in disaster response can be a distasteful subject as it discloses the unpleasant underbelly of apparently noble efforts. The fight against corruption and the fight for justice has never been an easy task. It exacts lot of toil, straight headed efforts and courage. In the end, the price we pay for a corruption free society is worth holding on to our pride and integrity.
Nepal has just entered the phase of reconstruction and there are many constructive steps that can be taken to mitigate corruption risks but then again the government needs to initiate strong actions and strategies to wipe out corruption before the situation worsens. The government needs to see to it that while fighting the monstrous corruption in the process it does not become a monster itself.
The author is the President of Integrity International
aakryty@gmail.com
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