Integration and Whole Futures

Global Challenges excerpt from the 2010 State of the Future report

This section includes regional views on the following challenges:

Global Ethics

How can ethical considerations become more routinely incorporated into global decisions? [Challenge 15]

-- Regional Considerations --

Africa: According a retired World Bank official, most African government anti-corruption units are embattled and officials are being killed. Meanwhile, the Business Ethics Network of Africa continues to grow with conferences, research, and publications. The South African special unit (the Scorpions) that has been fighting organized crime and corruption since 1999 has been eliminated. In eight African countries surveyed by Transparency International, 20% of those interviewed who had contact with the judicial system reported having paid a bribe.

Asia and Oceania: The Asian Legal Resource Centre held a regional meeting for participants to share methods to counter endemic cultures of corruption in Asia and to introduce the Independent Commission Against Corruption. Some believe the rate of urbanization and economic growth is so fast that it is difficult to consider global ethics, while others do not believe there are common global ethics and maintain that the pursuit to create them is a western notion.

Europe: Russia's new anti-corruption program has brought thousands of corruption cases, resulting in many hundreds of convictions of public officials and police; yet Transparency International rated the country the worst for bribery among 22 world powers in 2009. A German court found that Siemens executives had spent $1.7 billion in bribes from 2000 to 2006; Siemens announced that it was establishing a $100-million fund for distribution to NGOs that "promote business integrity and fight corruption." The European Ethics Network is linking efforts to improve ethical decisionmaking. The European integration process is helping establish ethical standards, yet increased non-European immigration raises new ethical challenges.

Latin America: The Argentine Museum of Memory and Human Rights opened to promote justice to ensure that the atrocities by military governments during the cold war of the past shall never be repeated. Rethinking the constructions of history, memory, and identity are ongoing to heal national trauma. University courses in business ethics are growing throughout Latin America. The Inter-American Initiative of Social Capital, Ethics and Development of the Inter-American Development Bank works to strengthen ethical values in the region.

North America: Professional ethics gained ground in the US with new policies that address the global financial crisis and with the subsequent reform of the derivatives' market, with legislation to reform the health care industry, with the end of torture and the phasing out the prison at Guantanamo Bay, and with the US-Russia agreement to substantially reduce nuclear arsenals. In October 2009, Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to "strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." However, there is still no generally accepted way to get corrupting money out of politics, elections, and "cozy relationships" between regulators and those they regulate.

Figure: Government Corruption in Brazil, Germany, and Nigeria (higher index means better situation)

Source: Computed by The Millennium Project, based on Transparency International data

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