Financial Transparency Coalition

There is just a week to go before the start of the Hidden Money, Hidden Resources conference in Lima, organized by the Financial Transparency Coalition and Latindadd, and the agenda covers a number of topics which are highly relevant to the Americas. The panel I´ve been invited to moderate, for example, will be exploring the links between citizen security, organized crime, corruption and money-laundering. Latin America and the Caribbean as a region has the highest levels of citizen insecurity in the world, and is the only region where criminal violence increased between 2000 and 2010 according to UNDP.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP),has a budget of roughly $5 billion, and operates about 6,000 foreign aid projects throughout the world. Last year, UNDP decided that it wanted to be more transparent in reporting what it does to the world. It got a $225,000 grant (Hat tip: Corruption Currents) to create a cool new web app:

Save the Children's Head of Research Alex Cobham has launched a blog that examines issues of inequality. Named "Uncounted," the blog has listed topics such as the life expectancy of indigenous peoples, caste and tribal poverty, and female illiteracy as those that reflect society's marginalization of individuals. At the same time, Cobham applies his inequality motif to tax issues, yet he notes a distinction between being "uncounted" by a lack of power and being "uncounted" by design. The latter "reflects the presence, not the absence of power."

ISTANBUL, Turkey – A United Nations Development Program (UNDP) commissioned report from Global Financial Integrity (GFI) on illicit financial flows from Least Developed Countries (LDCs) was presented for discussion yesterday at the United Nations IV Conference on Least Developed Countries hosted by the Republic of Turkey.