After decades of denial the international community finally faced the fact that corruption was a factor hindering the lives of millions of people around the globe. More than US$1 trillion (US$1,000 billion) is paid in bribes each year, according to a World Bank Institute estimate.

There are several international anti-corruption conventions and legal instruments to fight corruption agreed on by governments. In all of them the signatory countries established the principle of access to information as instrumental to their efforts to fight corruption:

• UN Convention against Corruption
• AU Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption
• The Inter-American Convention against Corruption
• ADB-OECD Action Plan for Asia-Pacific

These agreements recognise corruption as an international and cross-border phenomenon and express a shared high-level political commitment to addressing the problem individually and collectively. Each text establishes an international or regional framework of rules and standards that facilitate international cooperation. The conventions provide a checklist for reforming governments, establish a basis for governments to monitor one another, and represent a tool for civil society groups to hold their governments accountable.

For more detailed information on international conventions, please also visit the conventions section on the TI website.