Measuring Corruption: an urgent commitment of the Sustainable Development Agenda

On October 24, the Center of Excellence for Statistical Information on Government, Crime, Victimization and Justice UNODC-INEGI presented the Manual on Corruption Surveys. Methodological guidelines on the measurement of bribery and other forms of corruption through sample surveys at the United Nations World Data Forum held in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.

The Manual was presented in the Session Corruption & governance: a statistical overview, which was moderated by Martin Durand, Chief Statistician of the OECD. During this session Eliska Drapalova of the Hertie School of Governance, Eliza Mohamedou of PARIS21 and Enrique Ordaz of INEGI also participated, who presented the experiences of Mexico in the measurement of Corruption among people and economic units.

This Manual represents an important milestone in the fight against corruption, as it confirms the commitment of National Governments to produce, analyze and exchange statistical information on the different manifestations of corruption as indicated in Article VI of the United Nations Convention against Corruption and as determined in the Sustainable Development Agenda through goal 16.5 Substantially reduce corruption and bribery in all their forms.

Only by measuring the types, causes, costs and effects of corruption it will be possible to prevent it or investigate it. This publication provides definitions and methodologies to measure this phenomenon in a proper and comparable way.