Transparency International, a non-governmental organization founded for the sake of combating corruption, published this week its “Corruption Perceptions Index” (CPI) covering the year 2022. The index, which ranks 180 countries and territories across the globe based on their perceived level of public sector corruption, uses a scale of scores ranging between “0” (highly corrupted) and “100” (highly transparent) for 13 different data sources from 12 various institutions averaged to capture the perception of corruption over the past two years in each country. The report revealed that several countries are failing to address their corruption problems amid the global instability resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis and the growing global security threats. In this vein, CPI results showed that more than two-thirds of countries and territories covered in the report scored below 50 with an average overall score of 43. Moreover, the best performing region was Western Europe (average score: 66), while the worst performing region was Sub-Saharan Africa (average score: 32). The report noted that since the year 2018, many countries such as Moldova, South Korea, and Angola have managed to record major improvements in their CPI scores while others like Canada, Austria, and the United Kingdom have seen significant deterioration.

In figures, Denmark came in first place in the 2022 CPI with a score of 90, followed by both Finland and New Zealand (score: 87 each), Norway (score: 84) and Singapore (score: 83).

As far as the Arab region is concerned, the United Arab Emirates reported the highest CPI score (67) among its peers during the year 2022, ranking 27^th in the world, followed by Qatar (score: 58; global rank: 40), Saudi Arabia (score: 51; global rank: 54), Jordan (score: 47; global rank: 61), and Bahrain (score: 44; global rank: 69). Conversely, war-torn and terrorism-stricken Arab nations namely, Libya (score: 17; global rank: 171), Yemen (score: 16; global rank: 176), Syria (score: 13; global rank: 178) and Somalia (score: 12; global rank: 180), were the worst performers on a regional level. The report mentioned that the Middle East and North Africa region’s score dropped to a new low of 38 as the region is struggling from corruption, authoritarianism and insecurity.

On the local front, Lebanon ranked 150^th in the world in the 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index, gaining four positions from the 154^th place it occupied in 2021 with its CPI score remaining unchanged at 24, the country’s lowest level since the inception of the index in 2001. Consequently, Lebanon occupied the 14^th place in the region, right after Mauritania (score: 30; global rank: 130) and ahead of Iraq (score: 23; global rank: 157) and Sudan (score: 22; global rank: 162.