United Nations: The Iraqi government has taken serious steps in combating corruption.
The United Nations program confirmed on Monday that the Iraqi government has taken serious steps in recovering assets and combating corruption. Yama Turabi, director of the “Combating Corruption and Promoting Arbitration” project at the United Nations program, stated in a statement to the official newspaper that “the anti-corruption program has witnessed serious and urgent steps from the government with regard to following up on asset recovery specifically.” MiddleEast Politics
He added that “Iraq can improve the gap between cases in which damage has been proven and the number of civil lawsuits, the procedural errors in them, and the lack of quality and continuity of legal representation,” noting “the need to consider the continuity of the payment approach and the non-finality of the ruling in some cases.”
Abdullah Al-Dardari, Regional Director for Arab States at the United Nations Development Programme, also stated: “We at the United Nations Development Programme have been working to support Iraqi institutions in this field over the past ten years.”
He added that “the aspects of cooperation included supporting the development of the National Strategy for Integrity and Combating Corruption, providing technical assistance in drafting pivotal legal reforms to reduce corruption, providing experts and equipment to the Iraqi Academy for Combating Corruption, organizing specialized training in this field for various entities, and facilitating the building of cooperative relationships, including agreement instruments with counterpart countries to enhance mutual legal assistance, extradition of those accused of corruption, and recovery of funds.”
He also explained that “achieving positive steps in combating corruption during the last decade has been reflected in a slight improvement in the relevant international indicators, as Iraq advanced on the Corruption Perceptions Index from rank 161/168 countries (with a score of 16 percentage points) in 2015 to rank 136/182 (with a score of 28 percentage points) in 2025.”
He emphasized “the current government’s commitment to completing this approach, given Iraq’s need to combat corruption as a fundamental means of enhancing the quality of public services, attracting investment, accelerating the pace of social and economic development, and increasing the efficiency of resource allocation in serving the people.” He continued, “From a developmental perspective, we must not view corruption from a narrow perspective that confines it to the theft of public resources that should have been allocated to investment in promoting development and achieving prosperity for the people, despite the enormity of this direct damage. Direct financial losses resulting from corruption worldwide are estimated at approximately $3.6 trillion annually, a value that is close to the size of the current financial gap in funding work to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals in the 2030 Agenda in all countries of the world.”
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