In 2013, torture remains as endemic, omnipresent and multi faceted as ever .

She expressed concern in particular that, increasingly, HIV AIDS was an epidemic of women and the poor.

As demand for land and land prices increased, corruption became rampant, with some politicians, industrialists, and bureaucrats using the lack of transparency in land ownership and zoning to misappropriate assets.

In Hong Kong, corruption was so pervasive as late as the 1970 s if your house was on fire, the fire department demanded payment before pumping water! that an independent anti corruption commission was appointed specifically to investigate and prosecute both public and private corruption.

Though it is universally accepted and enforced in most countries, money laundering remains rampant. The hope underlying the current transparency proposals is that their relative simplicity would boost their impact.

Poverty remained widespread in the occupied territories.20 Approximately 11 per cent of all Palestinian families living below the poverty line in Palestine were headed by women, and the overall percentage of poor families headed by women was greater than that of poor families headed by men.21 The Palestine Human Development Report observed that there was a close relationship between female poverty in Palestinian society and the nature of the male dominated job market.