International Anti-Corruption Day – what do young people think?
Today, thirteen years ago, the United Nations Convention against Corruption was signed in Mexico, and since then, December 9 has been marked worldwide as the International Anti-Corruption Day. Corruption is, in the broadest sense, any form of abuse of power for personal or group gain, whether in the public or private sector. The Transparency International Corruption Perception Index for 2020 ranks Bosnia and Herzegovina among the countries in the world where the state of corruption is deteriorating the most. Noting the decline of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) by 11 places, the BiH index ranks 111th out of 180 countries, with a score of 35 (scale 0 -100), which is also the worst score since 2012, when BiH was ranked 72nd with grade 42.
Marking the International Anti-Corruption Day is an occasion to look at the attitudes of young people on this topic and their experiences with different types of corrupt behavior and ask ourselves whether and to what extent corruption affects their quality of life and life goals.
The results of a survey on the position of young people in Bosnia and Herzegovina by the Institute for Youth Development KULT showed that the desire of young people to leave the country is still high as more than 50 percent of young people said they want to leave BiH. As one of the most common reasons for leaving the country, young people cite corruption. That corruption, as a socially dangerous phenomenon, penetrates into all segments of society and greatly affects the younger generations, is shown by the results according to which corruption is on the fourth place on the list of problems that young people worry about the most, immediately after unemployment.
Corruption in Bosnia and Herzegovina is widespread in all segments of life, especially in the field of employment, which makes it difficult to achieve common goals after graduation. Almost 90 percent of young people believe that bribery for a job in public administration is a practice in BiH society, of which almost 60 percent believe that bribery is present in most cases, while for the remaining 30 percent such practices exist but are not frequent. When it comes to employment in private companies, the attitudes of young people differ. 36.5 percent of young people believe that bribery for employment purposes is present in most cases, while for 45.1 percent think such a practice is not frequent, but it exists. As many as 55.8 percent of young people claim to have heard that a person paid a certain amount of money to get a job, while almost 5 percent witnessed the purchase of a job directly.
The results of the research give a rather gloomy picture. Why? First of all, because they show that the perspective of young people for employment without corrupt practices is quite hopeless, and that corruption is a big problem for young people and one of the important reasons for forcing them to leave BiH.
In order to change that, substantial changes are needed in the society, but also in the state, which should show care for young people in appropriate ways. In order to reduce the level of tolerance of corruption in employment, stronger implementation of the rule of law and the rule of law is needed. On the other hand, the reform of the education system should create transparent rules and procedures to combat corruption.
In the future, the Institute for Youth Development KULT, together with the Office for Combating Corruption and Quality Management of Sarajevo Canton, with the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, will work on improving non-formal education on anti-corruption, informing young people about opportunities and strategic documents in the field of anti-corruption, conducting research and analysis on the perception of corruption among young people, and other informational and educational events on the topic of anti-corruption with special emphasis on youth.
