November 2015

On November 5, UNODC and UNDP, under the UN Pacific Regional Anti-Corruption (UN-PRAC) Project, hosted with the Global Organization of Parliamentarians Against Corruption (GOPAC) a special event “6^th Forum of Parliamentarians” aimed at mobilizing best practice implementation of UNCAC, held during the Sixth Conference of the States Parties to the United Nations Convention against Corruption in St Petersburg, Russian Federation. There were 1,500 participants in attendance from 164 countries at the Conference.

Executive Director of UNODC, Mr. Yury Fedotov, delivered the keynote statement and highlighted the importance of partnerships, acknowledging GOPAC as an important partner in the fight against corruption.

The first panel on ‘Partnerships to Curtail Corruption in the Pacific’ focused on the engagement of Parliamentarians and the role that they can play to promote the ratification of UNCAC and contribute to its implementation in the Pacific region.

Experience was drawn on from the UNDP-UNODC Pacific Regional Anti-Corruption Project and GOPAC Oceania’s activities to illustrate best practices and common challenges, with the specific experiences of the Cook Islands and Kingdom of Tonga highlighted.

Pacific examples cited also included the recent conviction of 14 Vanuatu MPs on bribery and Leadership Code violations, and the need for Pacific Parliamentarians to address transparency in issues of gift-giving and codes of conduct.

The second panel on ‘Prosecuting Grand Corruption: Let us bring them to justice’ advanced GOPAC and Transparency International’s aim of pursuing international legal instruments and strategies to apprehend, prosecute, judge, and sentence perpetrators of grand corruption.

National and international measures to address grand corruption were discussed, as well as to ensure that remedies are provided to victims and the proceeds of crime returned, such as through the UNODC-World Bank Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative.

The International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala was highlighted as an example of where grand corruption is being addressed.

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Pacific delegates to the Conference of State Parties (CoSP) in St. Petersburg, the Russian Federation, have had their strong call for Pacific recognition in the UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) deliberations agreed to this week.

“Hard work by all the Pacific delegates saw a motion sponsored by Fiji and Nauru to recognize Small Island Developing States (SIDS) agreed to unanimously,” said Cook Islands Head of Delegation and Minister for Justice, Hon. Nandi Glassie at the CoSP, which had over 1,500 participants in attendance from 164 countries.

Eleven Pacific Island Countries were represented at CoSP with many representatives making strong calls for renewed anti-corruption efforts and programmes throughout the Pacific.

The SIDS resolution, ‘Strengthening the Implementation of UNCAC in SIDS’, recalled the SIDS Accelerated Modalities of Action (SAMOA) Pathway, which was the outcome statement of the third International Conference on SIDS, hosted in Samoa in September 2014.

While urging non-States parties to ratify UNCAC, the St. Petersburg SIDS resolution also urges States parties to support SIDS in their efforts to implement and monitor Sustainable Development Goal 16 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

It also calls upon States parties, including those with relevant expertise, to assist with the bilateral, regional and international provision of technical assistance to support anti-corruption reform in SIDS, including those technical assistance needs identified through the Implementation Review Mechanism.

States parties and other interested donors with relevant expertise applicable to the contexts of SIDS are also encouraged, upon request, to share their best practices with SIDS through existing and future bilateral, regional and international cooperation mechanisms.

“We acknowledge the assistance of UNODC, UNDP and the United Nations Pacific Regional Anti-corruption (UN-PRAC) Project and the Global Organisation of Parliamentarians Against Corruption (GOPAC) for their initiatives in the Pacific which has resulted in the big Pacific contingent being present and participating strongly at this Conference,” Minister Glassie told the CoSP plenary meeting.

Minister Glassie also spoke at a special side event at CoSP, “Anti-corruption in SIDS: What is there? And what else is needed?”, which addressed anti-corruption officials from small islands in the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and Pacific regions, together with technical assistance providers, to elaborate on national progress and remaining challenges to anti-corruption reform, and suggested priorities.

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All references to Kosovo below shall be understood to be in the context of Security Council Resolution 1244 (1999).

#becauseofcorruption photo competition

UNDP Kosovo has launched the “#becauseofcorruption“ (#fajikorrupsionit or #zbogkorupsije) competition, in which everyone is invited to show the damaging effects of corruption in their daily lives by using photos as a means of communication.  The top 20 photos will be part of an exhibition on 9 December 2015, to mark International Anti-Corruption Day. The competition will be open until 4 December and is part of an ongoing set of activities organized by UNDP’s Support to Anti-Corruption Efforts in Kosovo project, in cooperation with Kosovo Democratic Institute.

For more information, visit: http://www.ks.undp.org/content/kosovo/en/home/presscenter/articles/2015/11/24/photo-competition-becauseofcorruption-launches-.html

Integrity Planning in Mamusha and Gracanica municipalities

In the last weekend of October 2015, UNDP Kosovo gathered directors and representatives from the municipality of Mamusha, a municipality with a majority of Turks, to work on their own Integrity Plan. Together with the mayor, directors of departments, and representatives of the administration, facilitated by the UNDP expert in integrity planning, they tackled several problems and issues that they have to face during their work with the citizens and inside the municipality. Some of the issues included the lack of transparency and corruption in procurement, public sector and administration procedures, and difficulty with updating the municipality’s public website.

Just 15 minutes by car from Pristina’s city center is the municipality of Gracanica, inhabited by a majority of Serbs. It is here, two weeks later, that UNDP Kosovo settled down for the weekend with its public reform expert to lay down the beginning of an Integrity Plan for the entire organization of the municipality. As all departments were represented and the mayor himself was there for the workshop, it proved to be a productive weekend. Topics introduced in the workshop included corruption risk assessment in the public sector, quality management systems, and transparency through e-governance.

The integrity planning workshops in Mamusha and Gracanica are part of multiple activities of the Support to Anti-Corruption Efforts in Kosovo (SAEK) project, which aims to promote transparency and accountability in Kosovo. Besides Gracanica and Mamusha, three other municipalities that receive support from UNDP to develop their integrity plans include Pristina, Gjakova/Djakovica, and Gjilan/Gnjilane.

Anti-Corruption Legislation in Braille

In partnership with the Ministry of Justice and the Kosovo Anti-Corruption Agency, UNDP Kosovo turned over anti-corruption laws translated in Braille (Albanian and Serbian languages) to the Kosovo Association of the Blind. This activity corresponded with the beginning of the “White Cane” week, aiming to increase awareness for the visually impaired persons. This support is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1211582892190360.1073741859.380106255338032&type=3

Preventing corruption in the health sector: Establishment of Offices for Patients’ Rights

UNDP Kosovo in cooperation with Minister of Health and Association of Patients’ Rights have established offices to protect the rights of patients. The offices will serve to prevent corruption in the health sector.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1199676543380995.1073741858.380106255338032&type=3

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All references to Kosovo below shall be understood to be in the context of Security Council Resolution 1244 (1999).

UpShift Transparency

In Kosovo youth makes up one-third of the total population. Yet, it is a traditionally marginalized group. The young are underrepresented, with almost no say in the decision-making processes. Add corruption to the picture and the tendency that voices will fall on deaf ears is even higher. This does not go unnoticed even by the citizens themselves, as according to them, corruption is the third biggest issue harming their lives, after poverty and unemployment.

UNDP Kosovo believes that youth should be at the center of the agenda when addressing corruption because investing in youth has a powerful ripple effect on the community. This is why working with youth remains a crucial part of UNDP’s intervention in Kosovo. Similarly, UNICEF, our sister agency—through its Innovations Lab in Kosovo—has been investing a lot in youth empowerment through its many initiatives. Among the most eminent ones is the UpShift series.

Upshift uses a methodology called human centered design, which keeps the human, the people you are designing for, at the heart of the process when designing solutions to solve their problems. UNDP and UNICEF decided to join forces and implement the UpShift methodology to help fight corruption, enhance institutional transparency, and empower Kosovo youth to have equal access to information, justice, and decision making. We called it: UpShift Transparency.

UpShift Transparency was an event that gathered youth from eight municipalities in Kosovo (Prishtina, Prizren, Gjilan/Gnjilane, Gjakova/Djakovica, Mitrovica, Peja, Mamusha, and Gracanica) to spend a weekend in one of the most beautiful mountainous parts of Kosovo, Prevallë/Prevallac. There they identified corruption issues in their communities, and then by using innovative methods, more specifically human centered design, generated and designed pragmatic solutions for these problems.

Besides these intense working sessions with the aim of generating solutions, the camp consisted of talks from CSOs, media and government representatives; as well as fun activities such as anti-corruption movie night, karaoke night, etc. The uniqueness of this transparency youth camp was that it gathered youth from various ethnicities, including Albanians, Serbs and Turks. It is living proof that corruption is a common evil that affects everyone. It adds sand to the wheels of prosperity. Yet, the marginalized groups pay the biggest price.

At the end of the camp, all the teams had the chance to pitch their ideas in front of a professional jury. The three best ideas were selected and awarded with a €2,000 prize each to help with the implementation of the projects. The first idea aimed to tackle corruption in the education sector. The second and third ideas focused on creating more convenient channels for reporting corruption cases in general as well as in the employment processes. For the following three months, the team of the UNICEF Innovations Lab will support the winning groups turn their ideas into reality.

Digigjakova

Another initiative supported by UNDP Kosovo to empower youth was Digigjakova, which provided young people with an opportunity to take on e-gov’t challenges in one Kosovo municipality. Digigjakova gathered teams of bright young software developers to address three e-government challenges facing the Municipality of Gjakovë/Djakovica, in western Kosovo.

The challenges are in the areas of e-recruitment, e-complaints, and e-spending. The teams competed during an extensive weekend web-solution development marathon (21-22 November). Winning teams will receive a cash prize of €4,000 each. Digigjakova is a continuation of events organized by the Support to Anti-Corruption Efforts in Kosovo (SAEK) project.

To know more about Digigjakova, please visit:

http://www.ks.undp.org/content/kosovo/en/home/presscenter/articles/2015/11/16/striving-for-a-more-transparent-municipality.html

http://digjitale.com/2015/11/digigjakova-solve-citizens-problems/

www.digigjakova.org

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THE 13th Regional Seminar “Tackling Corruption in Development Projects” organized by UNDP, in partnership with the ADB/OECD Anti-Corruption Initiative for Asia and the Pacific, brought together about a hundred participants, from anti-corruption agencies, international organizations, donor countries, as well as representatives from the private sector, civil society, and media, from more than 20 states of Asia-Pacific and beyond. Held 19-20 November in the capital, Ulaanbaatar, the event was hosted by the Independent Authority Against Corruption of Mongolia. H.E. Mr. Enkhbold Zandaakhuu, Speaker of Parliament, opened the seminar, while the Prime Minister H.E. Chimediin Saikhanbileg, was present at the closing.

In her welcoming remarks, Ms. Beate Trankmann, UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in Mongolia, referred to the great opportunity offered by the recent adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals to support anti-corruption efforts. For the first time, specific targets to “significantly reduce corruption and bribery in all its forms” as well as illicit financial flows (SDG 16), are included in the common Agenda 2030, which all UN Member States—developed and developing countries alike—agreed on.

Tackling corruption in development projects is a major challenge for all actors. In the two-day seminar several points of view were presented. Donor countries need to adopt zero tolerance to corruption policies. At the same time, they should find the right balance between integrity risk management and efficient responsiveness. Guidelines issued by the OECD Anti-corruption Task Team will be a useful tool for a donor approach to curb corruption in their projects.

Multilateral banks debarment agreements were also discussed as a concrete way of improving the effectiveness of the partnerships through mutual cooperation and information sharing.

Government representatives from the Philippines and Indonesia shared their success stories in linking anti-corruption to national development plans and in setting-up tracking systems in emergency situations to manage effectively the use of funds for recovery and reconstruction.

UNDP, ADB, GIZ and TI presented various initiatives and tools developed to assist anti-corruption agencies and governments in general to enhance the involvement of the community, empower citizens to hold their government more accountable, increase transparency, and assess the effectiveness of their anti-corruption agencies and policies.

Lectures were accompanied by more practical sessions and working groups. Case studies were analysed, testing the investigative skills of participants. The exercise was greatly appreciated by the audience, and it showed how the problem in corruption investigations often is not a lack of information, but the lack of capacity to read it.

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