KABUL - The European Union’s anti-corruption drive for 2017 in Afghanistan will focus on key sectors such as the illegal extraction of minerals from mines and corruption in the security and judicial institutions, the EU announced on Sunday.
The EU ambassador to Afghanistan Franz-Michael Skjold Mellbin has said corruption remains a major challenge for Afghanistan.
“As last year, the EU would like to continue focusing on corruption in Afghanistan. We are launching a campaign that will focus on four issues: illegal mining; corruption in the judicial sector; and corruption within the security forces. Then it will also look at the need to try to prevent corruption from actually happening. At the end of the campaign we will have a large anti-corruption conference in May, as we had last year,” he said.
Meanwhile, watchdogs overseeing the anti-corruption campaigns in Afghanistan have said that EU’s 2016 anti-corruption campaign was a positive move toward curbing the scale of corruption in the country.
“We hope that this time also, the campaign lead to the establishment of an anti-corruption commission. The Afghan government had committed establishment of the commission two years ago, but it has not fulfilled its commitment yet. We hope that the pressure which is mounted on the government by our international partners, particularly the EU, will force the government to establish the commission,” said Mohammad Nasir Taimoori, a member Integrity Watch Afghanistan.
Over the past decade, corruption has been one of the major concerns for the Afghan people and the international community.
However, during this period, several counter-corruption were established in the country, but tangible outcomes out of these efforts were not achieved and Afghanistan still tops one of the world’s most corruption countries. (Tolonews)