Jordan ranks 5th among Arab countries, 58th globally on Corruption Perceptions Index

AMMAN — Jordan in 2021 ranked fifth among Arab countries and 58th globally among 180 countries on the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) issued by Transparency International.

The report, issued on Tuesday in Berlin, showed that Jordan had developed in several indicators and maintained its rank in others during 2021, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

Overall, the CPI shows that control of corruption has stagnated or worsened in 86 per cent of countries over the last decade, according to the Transparency International website.

Two years into the devastating COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s CPI reveals that corruption levels remain at a standstill worldwide, Petra reported.

A total of 27 countries this year are at a historic low in their CPI score. Meanwhile, human rights and democracy across the world are under assault.

"This is no coincidence. Corruption enables human rights abuses. Conversely, ensuring basic rights and freedoms means there is less space for corruption to go unchallenged," the website said.

The 2021 CPI results show that countries with well-protected civil and political liberties generally control corruption better. The fundamental freedoms of association and expression are crucial in the fight for a world free of corruption.

“There is an urgent need to accelerate the fight against corruption if we are to halt human rights abuses and democratic decline across the globe,” the website said.

The index ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption according to experts and businesspeople. It relies on 13 independent data sources and uses a scale of zero to 100, where zero is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.

More than two-thirds of countries (68 per cent) score below 50 and the average global score remains static at 43. Since 2012, 25 countries significantly improved their scores, but in the same period 23 countries significantly declined, according to the website. 

This year, the top countries are Denmark, Finland and New Zealand, each with a score of 88. Norway (85), Singapore (85), Sweden (85), Switzerland (84), the Netherlands (82), Luxembourg (81) and Germany (80) complete the top 10.

South Sudan (11), Syria (13) and Somalia (13) remain at the bottom of the index.

Countries experiencing armed conflict or authoritarianism tend to earn the lowest scores, including Venezuela (14), Afghanistan (16), North Korea (16), Yemen (16), Equatorial Guinea (17), Libya (17) and Turkmenistan (19), the website added.

On the occasion of launching the report, Chairperson of Transparency International Delia Ferreira Rubio was quoted on the website as saying: "Human rights are not simply a nice-to-have in the fight against corruption. Authoritarianism makes anti-corruption efforts dependent on the whims of elite. Ensuring that civil society and the media can speak freely and hold power to account is the only sustainable route to a corruption-free society".