In Brief

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) should consider relocating from Manila if efforts to improve the legal environment for prosecution of corruption do not improve, a Norwegian report on the development banks’ anti-corruption efforts recommends.

A Norwegian report by corruption fighter Eva Joly proposes a joint institution for multilateral banks that would oversee a public blacklist and real cross debarment of firms involved in corruption.

Finland, which holds the EU Presidency, broke ranks with key EU countries on the World Bank’s Board recently when discussing a new anti-corruption strategy. The Bank strategy is to be discussed at the Bank’s annual meeting in Singapore later this month.

For years reluctant to confront Vietnam on the question of how its dams affect neighbouring Cambodia, Sweden and Norway are taking a noticeably tougher approach to the negative trans-boundary impacts of hydropower in the Mekong region.

Dagfinn Høybråten, Head of the Christian Democratic Party (CDP), has replaced Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg on the Board of the GAVI Fund. Within CDP there has been scepticism to the GAVI vaccine alliance, but Høybråten tells Development Today that the party is now behind GAVI.

The UN Panel assigned to make proposals for “a fundamental restructuring of the United Nations’ operational work” reached consensus on the main issues during a meeting in Oslo recently. However, a lot of work concerning the final text remains before the panel’s report is finished. Concrete proposals for reforms at UN headquarters level are likely to be vague due to strong resistance from G77 countries.

Denmark has used its financial muscle to influence the agendas of UN agencies in most areas - except corruption.

For a couple of years Denmark has topped the Commitment to Development Index, which is put together by the Washington-based Center for Global Development. It ...