Transparency Watch (TW): What do you think should be done to make the fight against corruption more effective in the Middle East?

HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal (HRH): Governments must regulate themselves there is no doubt. You see parliaments today keep finding reasons for legislation, following the promulgation of the legislation. Legislation is promulgated individually on individual things and clusters of interrelated families have to appear in a thematic approach. Of course this is not different to the international community, where fads and ad hoc measures seem to take precedence over interdisciplinarity. One minute they are talking about fighting malaria when we don’t even have mosquito nets, or we don’t have beds if we have the mosquito nets. There is no interrelated thinking to fighting AIDs or whatever issue it might be.

Secondly, citizens and civil society organisations must also be active in pressing their governments and holding them accountable to conventional standards. This means there must be substance to the dialogue between civil society organisations, citizens and governments, which is why I am so concerned with the continued legal illiteracy. Legal illiteracy has to be attended to if citizens are going to exercise their responsibilities.

Thirdly, international institutions can help keep anti-corruption conventions high on international agendas and provide fora for discussing progress, and of course this is something I hope can be a subject of standards. Because various UN conventions exist on combating corruption in all forms, I think that there is an assumption that just because these conventions exist and there are signatories to them that somehow this malaise will be attended to. I think that the question of developing a culture of good governance is basically what anti-corruption amounts to, and a covenant between good governance and citizenship is extremely important.

TW: Studies show that corruption can siphon off oil and gas revenues into the pockets of the elite. What do you think is the single most important action needed to ensure that the wealth from natural resources benefits all citizens?

HRH: I believe in custodianship and stewardship as common denominators between all schools of thought and beliefs and faiths. I was moderator for seven years of nine faith groups. In terms of morality and climate change and morality and the environment, I think one of the most interesting legal rulings is that of the Sheikh of the Azhar, Dr. Mohamed Sayyed Tantawi, in which he called for 20% of the profits of oil and other natural resources to be deposited into an alms foundation.

After 9/11 Zakat was stopped in the United States, because some organisations were siphoning money off to terror groups, as described by security agencies. But as far as the wealth of subterranean mineral resources is concerned, I think it is essential to see a focus once again on a cohesion fund. South East Asia has been able to do that; you have Vietnam and Thailand, two countries with totally different regimes as part of that wider bloc of the ASEAN countries. Why is it that the West Asian countries cannot follow that example of empowering the poor? I think the reason for it is basically the unilateral relations that have governed oil countries relations with the industrial world and with Arab countries or non-Arab countries - so we all go to petition oil countries for their support.

I think the current crisis might make it more patently obvious that inter-regional and intra-regional cooperation is required and in that context I go back to Paul Volker who called for a regional development bank, or development fund. The focus is not on making the rich richer, not even on sustainable development – keeping people at a certain level of development – but developing talent and developing local communities. In that environment, I think the intersection between society and nature will mature and prosper.

TW: How do you think transparency could be incorporated into the Zakat system?

HRH: I believe whether it is called Zakat, Sadaqat or similar wordings, what is important to me is that it can be managed by internationally reliable, competent figures who I am sure are available to perform this important task.

The main thing is the will to establish such a regional responsibility guaranteed by governments, the private sector and civil society, and a covenant that these funds would be made available to the designated categories. There are eight categories in terms of Zakat, which are in keeping with the Koran, the Hadith and the Suna. If Zakat is a pillar of Islam, to close it down and to assume that its closure will shut down these militant schools that are killing in the name of the quest for social justice, is actually a contradiction in terms. They are actually prospering in the hot house environment that we have created by such closures. I think to draw the carpet from under the feet of the militants who believe that killing is the only solution is to say that society has recognised its obligations to a pillar of faith.

TW:Jordan is expanding economically at a significant rate. Have you concerns that in this period of rapid growth, where perhaps existing systems and structures may struggle to keep pace, that some may well be left behind?

HRH: There is the reality that in terms of political economy the carrying capacity of each economy is immediately affected by the presence of refugees, displaced people, internally displaced people – stateless persons – driven, for example, in carrying up to 1 million displaced Iraqis. Officials speak of figures in excess of half a million, but this figure equates for 12% of the local population, certainly in terms of the first impact of the first arrivals of the Iraqis, some of whom have returned now. And my question is how to improve this temporary status? I think the time has come for the region to remove brand names – Iraqi, Palestinian, Jordanian, Israeli, Lebanese, Syrian, Egyptian – and to begin to look seriously at carrying capacity for the region. Just as an empirical database of natural human and economic resources to give you some kind of indication of whether or not you can begin a realistic recovery capacity plan. To do that, I believe investment has to be supra-national in energy and water for the human environment. We have to realise that continuing to fight within the context of depleted rivers – the Tiber, the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Nile and the Jordan (which is becoming rapidly non-existent) – requires a new approach. They could at least begin with two existential requirements – water and air which are no longer human rights. They are commodities on the world markets.

TW:You have spoken of adjusting the monetary system through a new Global Social Compact. What would you expect this to entail and achieve?

HRH: The UN Global Compact at the time of definition by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon was basically the public and private sector working together in this political initiative taken by former Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Of course the concept of civil society was then added and there are those in the world who would like to see administrative and professional responsibilities put first. I was rather impressed by Paul Volker’s remarks that he made on 8 April 2008 in which he said that the practice of important commercial investment banks to move certain sponsors and relative operations off balance sheets has been surprising in the light of the well publicised problems of Enron and other industrial companies. Experiences demonstrate that off balance sheets cannot be the same as out of mind or out of responsibility as too much is at risk, both in the financial and reputation sense.

In terms of our immediate region, the question of corruption figures very high in the general mistrust of peoples’ perceptions of both government and the private sector. As a member of the UN’s Commission for the Legal Empowerment of the Poor, I would like to emphasise that a new field has to be developed which brings together the public sector, the private sector and civil society, including professional associations, which is basically what Shirley Williams used to describe as ‘politics where people matter’; that is to say a human-centric approach. I am hopeful that the new definition of the closing the human dignity deficit can be the mission of the Coalition for the Global Commons in its meetings with staff in 2010 and 2012 in asking each region to live up to specific standards.

If you look at the Helsinki Process, I would regard the breakdown of governments and the breakdown of trust between governments and people, stakeholders, stewardship and custodianship as one of the aspects of the breakdown of basic security. Although in terms of hard security, weapons of mass destruction are regarded as a basic security issue. To quote our region, a Beirut-based Arab anti-corruption organisation estimates that institutionalised corruption has swallowed up a third of the accumulated income of all Arab countries in the five decades up to 2000 and the trend continues exponentially.

I think that closing the human dignity deficit will not be done by simply talking as politicians do of globalisation and democracy, but by actually applying democracy through building from the bottom up. Paul Collier at Oxford University and others have all called for building from the bottom of the pyramid. And of course Joseph Stiglitz did just that with the 600 organisations who called upon President Bush on 15 December 2008, to listen to the voices of the silenced majority.

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