Despite the proliferation of civil society monitoring and advocacy initiatives, accountability failures are still persistent. Vertical integration provides a strategy for civil society initiatives to minimize the loopholes in their advocacy and monitoring which facilitate the perpetuation of corruption and inefficiency.

The Proxy Challenge Competition was launched in 2013 to help aid donors better assess the results of anti-corruption efforts. In 2014, U4 ran the first edition of the challenge, and brought together a body of promising, bespoke proxy indicators. In this second round we still aim to find the best proxy indicators that can track progress of anti-corruption reform initiatives. We need reliable, intuitive, accessible, and cost-effective assessment methods that are useful across country-contexts.

The Bergen Exchanges on Law & Social Transformation is an annual interdisciplinary meeting place for scholars who want to understand the interplay between law and social change. The lectures, roundtables and panels bring together scholars and practitioners from all over the world. Welcome

The role played by journalists in anti-corruption is extremely valuable. What can donors do to maximise the media’s role?

Norge har brukt 20 milliarder kroner på sivil og militær innsats i Afghanistan i perioden 2001-2014. Over 9 000 norske soldater har tjenestegjort i landet. 6. juni legger det regjeringsoppnevnte Afghanistan-utvalget fram sin rapport om det norske engasjementet i Afghanistan. Hva er lærdommen?

The new Marriage Act in Malawi has been hailed for raising the legally prescribed age of marriage to 18, yet the truth is that there is no absolute minimum age of marriage in Malawi and that legal inconsistencies threaten the enforcement of the law.

A risk management strategy that can identify, assess and propose specific mitigation measures for corruption problems can help better address corruption. When done right, corruption risk management can contribute to increase development impacts.

Corrupt judicial systems undermine reforms and are a major impediment to ensuring access to justice and human rights for ordinary citizens across the world, says a new report published by the United Nations Development Programme and U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre on 8 April. Titled, A Transparent and Accountable Judiciary to Deliver Justice for All, the report cites survey data suggesting that the public perceive the judiciary as the second most corrupt public institution, after the police.

Lessons from 150 years of terrorism and counter-terrorism.

The Chr. Michelsen Prize for outstanding development research 2016 is awarded to Francesca R. Jensenius, Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI).

When oil prices fell in 2014, Angola and Venezuela lost half of their income base. Crisis followed. Why has it been so hard for these countries to reform their political economies?

Honduras has become one of the world’s most dangerous countries for activists. In the early hours of 3 March yet another prominent activist was murdered. Indigenous leader and human rights and environmental activist Bertha Cáceres was shot by unknown gunmen in her own house.

A series of case studies on the implementation of Open Government Partnership (OGP) reforms found that civil society participation fosters successful implementation, and that the limited capacity of local governments and civil society actors can be an obstacle for reform. Political commitment and strong coordination at the country level also improve the implementation record of OGP National Action Plans.

Den etniske konflikten har splittet Sri Lanka siden 1956, men utsiktene for varig fred er bedre enn på lenge.

Manipulating baseline forest data, double-counting project benefits, and skewing monitoring schemes have been known as likely corruption risks for REDD+. But how do these risks map onto the actual political economy of REDD+ implementation in selected pilot countries?

As the Tunisian dialogue quartet was awarded the Nobel peace prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee hailed the Tunisian quartet's essential role in advancing peaceful democratic developments. To make further advances, the Tunisian people must regain their sense of participation and significance in the process. If this happens, the Nobel peace prize can make an actual contribution to safeguard democracy in Tunisia.

Many experts see the introduction of results based financing (RBF) schemes as an opportunity to strengthen, or even reform, health systems; however, they are also a potential source of new risks and challenges that are not well understood.

The US military strike that devastated the MSF hospital in Kunduz in northern Afghanistan on 3 October generated profound, if short-lived, outrage in much of the world. The US government promised an investigation, and in late October appointed a military panel to do so. Yet its investigation is unlikely to address the more fundamental questions this attack raises: Why have US-airstrikes repeatedly produced catastrophic cases of “collateral damage” in Afghanistan?

A conversation between Diego Martínez, General Secretary of the Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Colombia, and Elin Skaar, Senior Researcher, CMI

Powerful communication tools in the pockets of billions and on our desktops have changed our ability to engage with the world through groups, apps, sites or maps. We organize ourselves, and participate in worldwide dialogue, through such tools. How are these tools used, particularly in developing countries, for humanitarian relief, governance and accountability, and civil society mobilization?

New digital tools represent a technological revolution, and are at the same time revolutionizing politics. They promise great potential for mobilizing people, ideas, and resources in new and profound ways. Join us in exploring the potentials and pitfalls of these new tools.

The U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre´s call for more EU action to curb corruption in non-EU partner countries hit a European nerve.

Military-civilian relationships go to the heart of a nation's culture and politics. Dr. Hazem Kandil from Cambridge University discusses Military, Security, and Politics in Regime Change. Prof. Catherine Lutz from Brown University will explore Military Power in Social Context. There will also be panel debates and young scholars' corner.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been criticised for being too broad and vague. What are the chances of success?

When general al-Sisi appeared wearing a suit for the first time, it caused public outrage among the middle class in Egypt. It also sparked immediate speculations of a presidential run. The suit became another symbol of the blurred lines between military and civilian relations.

Corruption and illegal trafficking endanger the world’s biodiversity

Corruption keeps people thirsty. It damages drinking supplies and sanitation and makes water inaccessible and unaffordable. Because dirty water can be deadly, cleaning up the water sector is a matter of life and death. Below is some advice for what donors can do to help prevent corruption in water management.

When societies go from military dictatorship to democracy or from internal armed conflict to peace, one of the toughest choices facing the government in the new order is how to deal with past violence. Great hopes have been pinned on transitional justice mechanisms, but the anticipated positive effects of transitional justice mechanisms on the process of restoring peace or (re)constructing democracy may be too high.

In the past, Brazilian intellectuals have coined the term “metaphor of war” to account for the representations of the crime and violence in Rio de Janeiro. The logic of war is at the very core of Rio’s pacification of the favelas, which in practice is carried out through armed confrontations between the police and armed groups within pacified favelas, where the main objective (on both sides), in spite of the rhetoric of peace, is still to kill the enemy.

Hawala networks can be useful partners in the work against money laundering of corruption gains, rather than the obstacle they are often considered to be.

The European Union needs to develop a coherent strategy and invest in tackling corruption outside its own neighbourhood.

So far, kindergartens and shootouts have by and large been completely unrelated issues in my world. Not anymore. Now, for the past days, every morning around 7.30, I have slowed down and scouted cautiously: Does anyone seem tense, watchful? Are there any police troops in a state of mobilization hiding somewhere close? Are there any heavy fireworks all of a sudden, alerts of that something is about to happen?

The number of newspapers in Kuwait has skyrocketed, but their owners are all closely affiliated to the political elite. Does this lead to a certain bias in the newspaper’s electoral coverage?

'We live in “an oligarch’s ideal world”. Western countries barely even pretend to disapprove of kleptocrats any more.’

On 19 March, Farkhunda was lynched by an angry mob on the streets of Kabul. She had been falsely accused of burning the Quran. In a swift trial, four men were sentenced to death, eight to 16 years in prison. The Farkhunda trial is a statistical outlier. In Afghanistan, few men are punished for violence against women.

In mid-April 2015, news emerged about the killing of nine police-men in Angola's Huambo province. The incident involved the police and members of Juliano Kalupeteca's "Light of the World" religious sect. In the following days, grizzling reports emerged of a massacre of perhaps hundreds of sect members. We do not yet know the truth. Angola's government appears to do its utmost to prevent knowledge of it to transpire. Will the international community remain passive?

Felipe doesn’t like it much, shootouts occur almost every day, but he knows that he can’t show any signs of weakness, so he tries to keep up appearances. Two weeks after arriving at Fazendinha he was shot in a confrontation with armed traffickers.