Martin Bell, OBE, British UNICEF Ambassador, former broadcast war reporter teaches at Summer University

Martin Bell, OBE was a BBC foreign affairs reporter and "war correspondent" and reported on wars and conflicts for 30 years. He became an independent politician and was elected as an MP in 1997. Recently he authored the book "A Very British Revolution: The Expenses Scandal and How to Save Our Democracy".

He was a teacher on the Integrity in Political Society Summer University course, offering a session on "Taking a Stand for Integrity from the Inside".

This course was part of the Integrity Summer school organized by Fredrik Galtung, Tiri - Making Integrity Work, London along with two other courses on "Leadership and Management for Integrity" and "Pro-Poor Integrity”.

The Integrity Summer School seeks to impart the principles, strategies and applied skills necessary to equip practitioners to effectively diagnosis integrity gaps and strategise for addressing them. Raising integrity standards of organisations is increasingly recognized as an effective tool to foster development and strengthen legitimate democratic governance.

This year, 74 participants have arrived from 34 countries to attend the course, mostly from Africa and Asia (e.g. from China, Congo, East Timor, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Liberia, Nepal, Sierra Leone, etc.). Learning from one another’s rich and diverse experiences is the key to the success of the courses as it was indicated by the feedback on the summer school:

“A lot of sharing experience and knowledge from participants, facilitators and resource persons is the useful part of this course because for me this will become my new knowledge and paradigm for the future action that I can take based on my own experience.”

Some of the most important things participants have highlighted that they have learned during the course include these:

“By the methods and exercises used during this course, I understood that transborder cooperation in the interest of dealing with integrity as a whole, and corruption in particular, can be a valid solution in improving legislation and practice.”

“The most important take away for me is that corruption is more often than not an accounting problem and it is integrity that is important.”