Anti-corruption efforts fail to improve Mongolia’s justice system

Mongolia earned a score of 36 in the latest Corruption Perceptions Index, descending 16 ranks to 103rd place since last year. Mongolia’s corruption perception ranking has been falling since 2015. In particular, it placed 72nd with a score of 39 in 2015, 87th with a score of 38 in 2016, and went down to 103rd with a score of 36 in 2017. The last time Mongolia scored 36 in the index was in 2012 when it ranked in 94th place out of 176 countries. Transparency International evaluated that Mongolia’s ranking hasn’t improved in recent years due to lack of major reform in the justice system. A clear indication of this is the fact that Mongolia’s rankings fell on both the Rule of Law Index and Corruption Perceptions Index. Executive Director of Transparency International Mongolia O.Batbayar underlined the importance of strengthening independency of law enforcement agencies as the potential threat of bribery among prosecutors and judges pulled back Mongolia’s overall score. He stated that Mongolia can climb up in ranks on the Corruption Perceptions Index if it manages to follow their recommended actions for curbing corruption. They recommend that the government minimize regulations on media, promote laws that focus on access to information, not to only invest in an appropriate legal framework for such laws but also commit to their implementation, ensure access to information and the protection of fundamental freedoms and align these to international agreements and best practices, and the government and businesses should proactively disclose relevant public interest information in open data formats. This year’s Corruption Perceptions Index, released on February 21, highlights that the majority of countries are making little or no progress in ending corruption, while further analysis shows journalists and activists in corrupt countries risking their lives every day in an effort to speak out. The index ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption according to experts and business people, using a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean. This year, the index found that more than two-thirds of countries score below 50, with an average score of 43. However, this poor performance is nothing new, compared to recent years. This year, New Zealand and Denmark rank highest with scores of 89 and 88 respectively. Syria, South Sudan and Somalia ranked lowest with scores of 14, 12 and 9 respectively. The best performing region is Western Europe with an average score of 66. The worst performing regions are Sub-Saharan Africa (average score of 32) and Eastern Europe and Central Asia (average score of 34).   More than half of the countries in the Asia Pacific scored less than 50 on the index, receiving an average score of 44. A high variance in public sector corruption across the region was observed, with top scorers like New Zealand and Singapore ranking first and sixth out of all countries and to some of the worst scorers like Cambodia, North Korea and Afghanistan ranking 161st, 171st, and 177th respectively.