ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Thursday called on members the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to establish an ad hoc intergovernmental committee to tackle corruption.
Qureshi spoke during a two-day seminar co-organized by the Pakistani government and the OIC’s Independent Permanent Human Rights Commission (IPHRC), which started in Islamabad on Thursday.
Themed “Combating Corruption – A Prerequisite for the Full Enjoyment of all Human Rights and Sustainable Development,” the seminar has in attendance about 200 representatives of international organizations, including the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), and United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
“The OIC countries must actively explore innovative ideas and initiatives to strengthen the existing international framework to prevent corruption and to end impunity,” Qureshi said during the opening session.
“As a first step, the OIC may consider establishing an open-ended intergovernmental ad hoc committee to prepare concrete and technical proposals for supplementary legal frameworks.”
The committee would work an OIC protocol and implementation mechanism for mutual legal assistance between member countries to monitor illicit financial flows and the return of stolen assets.
“Prime Minister Imran Khan has also been regularly highlighting the need to combat the scourge of corruption at the international level, particularly to address the phenomenon of illicit financial flows,” Qureshi said.
“This organized theft and illegal transfer of assets has profound consequences for the developing nations.”
Pakistan has been fighting vulnerabilities in the financial to prevent large sums from being transferred across borders outside the scrutiny of regulators.
Its current government was elected to power in 2018 on an anticorruption platform and vowed to bring home billions of dollars in money stashed abroad.
