Integrity Award recipients have come from an array of backgrounds – from journalism to law enforcement, social activism to pharmacy – reflecting the many faces of corruption itself. Within their varied sectors, many previous winners have continued to fight corruption, or gone on to overcome new challenges.

Social activist Ana Hazare of India has long been something of a celebrity in his community. He received an Integrity Award in 2003 in recognition of his two decades of activism against corruption in governmental corruption; a campaign which ultimately led to the resignation of two ministers.

Hazare’s activism was born of his desperation to improve the physical and social conditions of his impoverished native village Ralegan Siddhi, in Maharashtra. Hazare began donating his own money and using the agricultural method of “watershed development” to increase the village’s water supplies.

Regarded as a Gandhi-like figure by many who know him, Hazare did not stop there. He followed his campaign to improve water supplies with hunger strikes to campaign for a freedom of information law. These strikes are regarded as a major impetus for the passing of Maharashtra’s 2002 Right to Information Act – the model for the 2005 national version of the law. Ana Hazare has continued to enact peaceful protests since then in order to ensure the law is effectively implemented.

In March 2006, the national airline Air India began screening a documentary about Hazare’s work on all its 160 flights. The 16-minute film, entitled “In the Footsteps of Mahatma”, traces Hazare’s development and anti-corruption work, with the aim of spreading Hazare’s word internationally. The film was shown at the 2006 Tokyo International Documentary Festival, the International Women’s Festival in Calcutta and the Pune International Film Festival.

Nigeria’s Dora Akunyili received an Integrity Award in 2003, in recognition of her work against counterfeit drugs as Director General of Nigeria’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC). When Akunyili took control of NAFDAC in 2001, she found that Nigerian pharmaceutical regulators had been bought off by international drugs counterfeiters. She was plagued by death threats as she fought corrupt practices in the manufacture and trade of drugs, cosmetics and food products.

In a recent interview with the news website Voice of America, Akunyili reflected on how hard it had been to transform the corrupt working culture of NAFDAC’s staff. “It was a cultural revolution down to the way they dressed, the way they treated clients, explaining to them why corruption would not help us, and we even had to retrench some corrupt, redundant and incorrigible staff,” she said.

Dora Akunyili has gone on to receive a number of awards since those first difficult days, In December 2005, she was honoured with the International Service’s Grass-Roots Human Rights Campaigner Award; where the judges remarking on her direct style and bravery in the face of numerous assassination attempts. She donated part of her prize money to the widow of the bus driver who was killed during one assassination attempt in 2003.

Earlier this year, Akunyili extended her strong links with the anti-corruption movement by contributing to TI’s Global Corruption Report 2006 on corruption and health. She remains vigilant in the fight against counterfeit drugs in her second five-year term as director of NAFDAC.

Akunyili is not the only Integrity Award recipient to have faced death threats. French magistrate and judge Eva Joly, an Integrity Awards winner in 2001, continued to investigate fraud cases involving the French oil company Elf-Aquitaine despite the threats made to her life. In 2002, Joly was named Reader’s Digest European of the Year.

Joly has continued to fight against corruption, working in the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as assistant Secretary General responsible for combating corruption and money laundering. Last year, she was appointed as a special adviser on corruption to the Ministry. She continues to speak out against corruption. At a meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in September 2006, she noted that “corruption is a universal problem”. Despite this, Joly remains positive: “Hope lies in some developing countries where persons endowed with remarkable qualities set up institutions”.

Hope also lies in the determined successes of TI’s Integrity Award winners such as Hazare, Akunyili and Joly. Their triumphs did not end the day they received the Award. Neither did their ability to inspire. As the 2006 Integrity Awards come into view, the stories of previous winners are a reminder that some small battles have already been won.