In June 2018, the undersigned eighteen Transparency International (TI) National Chapters in the Asia Pacific region, the Managing Director of TI’s International Secretariat, and staff from TI’s Asia Pacific regional team participated in the TI Asia Pacific Regional Meeting in Taiwan.
At the meeting, TI committed to enhancing efforts and cross-regional action to curb corruption in Asia Pacific by working towards:
- Making Right to Information a reality. All citizens in the Asia Pacific region need to be able to exercise their right to access information.
- Ending harassment and restriction of citizens and civil society. Effective mechanisms to protect and enable people to stand up to corruption must be in place.
- Engaging the private sector on business integrity. In their role as both victims and perpetrators of corruption, private sector actors should play an active part in promoting clean business environments.
- Strengthening anti-corruption agencies. While in some countries anti-corruption authorities have demonstrated results, and should be praised for them, their independence and capacity are often challenged by the political environments where they operate.
- Joining forces with key actors. We are focusing attention on the role of the youth and women as both victims of corruption and agents of change. More effort should be made to reach out to larger groups of people, civil society networks and others.
The availability of balanced, credible, far-reaching and accessible media channels is critical to advance our ambitious regional goals.