Indicator 16.5.1 Proportion of persons who had at least one contact with a public official and who paid a bribe to a public official, or were asked for a bribe by those public officials, during the previous 12 months

Indicator 16.5.1: Proportion of persons who had at least one contact with a public official and who paid a bribe to a public official, or were asked for a bribe by those public officials, during the previous 12 months

Target 16.5: Substantially reduce corruption and bribery in all their forms

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)

Definition:

This indicator is defined as the percentage of persons who paid at least one bribe (gave a public official money, a gift or counter favour) to a public official, or were asked for a bribe by these public officials, in the last 12 months, as a percentage of persons who had at least one contact with a public official in the same period.

Concepts:

In the International Classification of Crime for Statistical Purposes (ICCS), bribery is defined as: ‘Promising, offering, giving, soliciting, or accepting an undue advantage to or from a public official or a person who directs or works in a private sector entity, directly or indirectly, in order that the person act or refrain from acting in the exercise of his or her official duties’ (ICCS Category 07031). This definition is based on definitions of bribery of national public officials, bribery of foreign public officials and official of international organisations and bribery in the private sector that are contained in the United Nations Convention against Corruption (articles 15, 16, and 21).

While the concept of bribery is broader, as it includes also actions such as promising or offering, and it covers both public and private sector, this indicator focuses on specific forms of bribery that are more measurable (the giving and/or requesting of bribes) and it limits the scope to the public sector.

The concept of undue advantage is operationalized by reference to giving of money (in addition to an official fee), gifts or provision of a service requested/offered by/to a public official in exchange for a special treatment.

This indicator captures the often called ‘administrative bribery’, which is often intended as the type of bribery affecting citizens in their dealings with public administrations and/or civil servants.

For this indicator, public official refers to persons holding a legislative, executive, administrative or judicial office. In the operationalization of the indicator, a list of selected officials and civil servants is used.

Percent (%)

This indicator is derived from household surveys on corruption experience and/or victimisation surveys with a module on bribery.

The indicator refers to individual (“direct”) experiences of the respondent, who is randomly selected among the household members, while (“indirect”) experiences of bribery by other members should not be included. However, direct bribery experiences of the respondent can include instances where the giving of money (in addition to an official fee), gifts or provision of a service is done through someone else (e.g. middlemen). Experience of bribery is collected through a series of questions on concrete contacts and experiences of bribery with a list of public official and civil servants.

The denominator refers only to those persons that had at least one direct interaction with a public official/civil servant as they form the population group at risk of experiencing bribery.

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) collects data on the prevalence of bribery through its annual data collection: the UN Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (UN-CTS). The data collection through the UN-CTS is facilitated by a network of over 140 national Focal Points appointed by responsible authorities.

The primary source of data on the indicator of bribery experience is usually the institution responsible for surveys on corruption/victimisation surveys (National Statistical Office, Anti-Corruption Agency, etc.).

Data on bribery are sent to UNODC by member states, usually through national UN-CTS Focal Points which in most cases are national institutions responsible for data production in the area of crime and criminal justice (National Statistical Offices, Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Justice, etc.).

Bribery prevalence in the SDG indicator framework is defined as the percentage of persons who paid at least one bribe (gave a public official money, a gift or counter favour) to a public official, or were asked for a bribe by these public officials, in the last 12 months, as a percentage of persons who had at least one contact with a public official in the same period.

In this formulation, the share of the population in contact with public officials who was asked to pay a bribe (but did not give it) is to beincluded in the numerator of the indicator. However, several historical and on-going survey programmes implemented at the national and international level do not include experiences of bribery refusal in the formulation and prevalence computation. It is expected that data according to the preferred definition (which includes bribery refusal) will become increasingly available at national and global level, as standardised question wording and indicator computation are applied.

On a more general level, it should be noted that this indicator provides information on the experiences of bribery occurring during interactions between citizens and the public sector, while it does not cover other forms of corruption, such as ´grand corruption´, trading in influence, or abuse of power.

The indicator is calculated as the total number of persons who paid at least one bribe to a public official (or were asked for a bribe) in the last 12 months, over the total number of persons who had at least one contact with a public official in the same period, multiplied by 100.

$Bribery\mathrm{\ }prevalence=100*\frac{B}{C}$

Where B refers to the number of people who paid a bribe to or were asked for a bribe by public official in the last 12 months, and C refers to the total number of people who had contact with public officials in the last 12 months.

2024-07-29

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)

Indicator 16.5.2: Proportion of businesses that had at least one contact with a public official and that paid a bribe to a public official, or were asked for a bribe by those public officials during the previous 12 months

Indicator 16.4.1: Total value of inward and outward illicit financial flows (in current United States dollars)

2