Billions of dollars worth of bribes paid each year go into the pockets of public officials in rich countries

Julian Borger, diplomatic editor
Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,330723101-103681,00.html

International organised crime has become a $2 trillion (£984bn) behemoth that threatens to pervert democracy around the world and fuel already dangerous levels of global inequality, a new study warns.
While the world is getting richer, the relentless rise of organised crime has emerged as one of the most potent threats to the planet's future, alongside global warming and the scarcity of drinkable water, according to the State of the Future survey by the World Federation of United Nations Associations.

The annual takings of criminal gangs around the world are roughly equivalent to Britain's GDP, or twice the world's combined defence budgets. Half of that amount is paid as bribes, which tend to make the rich and powerful even wealthier.

The 225 richest people on the planet now earn the same as the poorest 2.7bn, equivalent to 40% of humankind, the report finds.
And although democracy is on the rise, with nearly half the world's population now living in democratic systems, it is in danger of being demolished by a culture of bribery.

"The implications the world has to understand is that government decisions can be bought and sold," Jerome Glenn, head of the association's millennium project and one of the report's authors said. "What happens if organised crime decides that instead of buying and selling cocaine or heroin, it's going to buy and sell government decisions? That's a threat to democracy."

Contrary to the stereotype of the banana republic, only a minority of the political bribes paid each year goes to public officials in the developing world. The report published this week finds "the vast majority of bribes are paid to people in richer countries" where decision taking is "vulnerable to vast amounts of money".

Much of the income, more than $520bn, that flows through the world's black economy comes from counterfeiting and piracy. The drug trade is the second biggest earner, with an estimated $320bn in takings. Human trafficking is a small industry by comparison, worth under $44bn but arguably the most pernicious. According to the UN, up to 27 million people are now held in slavery, far more than at the peak of the African slave trade. The majority of the victims this time are Asian women.

The report says: "Violence against women by men continues to cause more casualties than wars do today." One in five women around the world will be a victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime. The situation is so bad schools should teach girls martial arts for self-defence, it says.

"We have departments of defence around the world protecting people. What's the department of defence for women?" Mr Glenn asked.

The survey, however, does find that for most people the world is becoming "a better place", and should continue to improve over the next decade, with generally rising incomes, life expectancy and access to health and education.

The global economy grew by 5.4% in 2006, far outstripping population growth of just over 1%. "At this rate, world poverty will be cut by more than half between 2000 and 2015, meeting the UN millennium development goal for poverty reduction, except in sub-Saharan Africa," it predicts.

According to the WHO, the world's average life expectancy is expected to increase, from 48 years for those born in 1955, to 73 years for those born in 2025.

Peace

And despite the continuing atrocities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Darfur, the world is overall becoming a more peaceful place, according to the report. In Africa the number of conflicts fell from 16 in 2002 to just five in 2005.

By crunching all this data into an overall measure of wellbeing, the report's authors have derived an index for the future. It slopes reassuringly upwards over the next 10 years but the principal threats to this optimism appear to come from such effects as poverty levels, global warming, water shortages and organised crime. The last may be the most dangerous because of its capacity to subvert decision making and because there is little concerted international action to combat the threat.

"It is time for an international campaign by all sectors of society to develop a global consensus for action against [transnational organised crime] which has grown to the point where it is increasingly interfering with the ability of governments to act," the report says.

It points out that the global estimate of 13 to 15 million children made orphans through Aids represents a gigantic pool of potential foot-soldiers for criminal gangs. "There is nothing stopping it," Mr Glenn said.

"There is no global strategy."

In numbers

$1000bn: The cost of world corruption in 2006

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