Anti-Corruption Workshop Held in the Dominican Republic

On April 19th and 20th, 2010, the General Secretariat of the OAS, through the Department of Legal Cooperation, of the Secretariat for Legal Affairs, in conjunction with the National Commission for Ethics and the Fight against Corruption of the Dominican Republic (CNECC), held a Workshop in follow-up to the First and Second Rounds of Review the Mechanism for the Follow-up on the Implementation of the Inter-American Convention against Corruption (MESICIC), as they pertain to the Dominican Republic. The Workshop, which gathered more than fifty representatives from Dominican ministries, national universities, business groups, international organizations, and various branches of civil society, was held at the V Centenario Hotel, in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

This diverse group of representatives met to evaluate and strengthen the Draft Plan of Action prepared by Paula Henriquez – a Dominican expert on anti-corruption mechanisms. Her comprehensive work reviews the Dominican Republic’s adherence to the recommendations issued by the Committee of Experts of the MESICIC, specifically on the subjects of government hiring, conflict of interest, the training of public servants, the procurement of goods and services and the use of public resources, reporting income and assets, access to information, and the protection of whistleblowers, among other areas. The Draft Plan of Action makes recommendations on how the Dominican Republic can strengthen anti-corruption mechanisms with respect to these topics, and outlines the processes, actors, timeframe, and costs necessary to implement a specific recommendation.

According to Dr. Miguel Suazo, Executive Director of the CNECC, “For the Dominican Republic, this Plan of Action marks an excellent opportunity to raise awareness of the MESICIC recommendations with the government institutions that deal with the areas that are the subject of the recommendations, thus allowing for the coordination of better implementation.”

Dr. Suazo further noted that “true and effective implementation of the MESICIC recommendations requires the interaction of various government agencies and organisms, under the supervision of a central entity, which monitors these anticorruption policies, and, in our case, that is the National Commission for Ethics and the Fight against Corruption.”

The workshop in the Dominican Republic was just one of a series that is being held in 2010. Similar workshops have already been held in Belize and Guatemala, and additional workshops are scheduled to take place in Suriname, Bolivia, and Costa Rica later this year.

These workshops are all part of a general framework, established through the MESICIC, to fortify inter-American legal cooperation. The three-part process involves hiring a regionally-recognized consultant to write a draft plan of action on their country’s adherence to the MESICIC, followed by a national workshop where representatives from the public and private sectors have the opportunity to enrich the consultant’s text. The third step is the integration of the first two steps, in which the consultant writes the final plan of action, taking into consideration the comments, suggestions, and questions posed during the national workshop. This document is then provided to the appropriate governmental authority who approves the plan. This follow-up mechanism gives added validity to the recommendations developed in the MESICIC Rounds of Review by evaluating both the function and practice of each recommendation within a country’s specific national context.

What is the MESICIC?

The Mechanism For Follow-up on the Implementation of the Inter-American Convention against Corruption, known as MESICIC for its Spanish acronym, is a tool to support the development of the Inter-American Convention against Corruption through cooperation between States Parties.

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