Corruption in the Arab World

The meeting of Transparency International was held, recently, in Qatar. It focused on the issue of corruption which is prevailing world wide. At the meeting a scale was from 0-10 was applied to measure corruption in all countries affiliated with the United Nations (180 countries). The highest the score the least the corruption. It is referred to as "Corruption Perception Index" (CPI).

Al Jazeera.net (11/18/09) reported the results that Transparency International published regarding the corruption level in the Arab world. The following is the classification of countries based on the score from 0 to 10:
Qatar = 7 ; United Arab Emirates = 6.5 ; Oman =5.5 ; Bahrain = 5.1 ; Jordan = 5.0 ; Saudi Arabia = 4.3 ; Tunis = 4.2 ; Kuwait = 4.1 ; Morocco = 3.3 ; Algeria =2.8 ; Egypt = 2.8 ; Jibouti= 2.8 ; Syria = 2.6 ; Lebanon = 2.5 ; Libya = 2.5 ; Mauritania = 2.5 ; Yemen = 2.1 ; Iraq = 1.5 ; Sudan = 1.5 ; Somali = 1.1 .
For the sake of comparison the highest ranked country with the least corruption was New Zealand. It ranked at the top the scale with a score of 9.4, followed by Denmark with a score of 9.3

According to Transparency International corruption world wide cost the public more than one trillion dollars last year (2008). One third of that figure is in the Middle East Region. Unfortunately, corruption is becoming a routine in the Arab world specially on the government level. The average citizen accepts it placidly instead of resisting it. Will this situation be ever ameliorated? This remains to be seen!