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Mauritius, in collaboration with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), has been selected to host the next global conference on anti-corruption reform in small island jurisdictions. This global event is expected to be held from 17 to 21 August 2015. The participants will be members of the small island developing states (SIDS), which are also State Parties to the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC). It is expected that participants who will attend the conference will be from Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Cape Verde, Comoros, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Maldives, Sao Tomé and Principe, Seychelles, Timor-Leste, Trinidad and Tobago, as well as from the Pacific region namely from Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Vanuatu. 

The overall objective of this high level conference will be to discuss the peculiar challenges faced by a small jurisdiction when combating corruption, facilitating the exchange of experiences and best practices on anti-corruption reforms in various areas such as asset declaration, whistle-blower/witness protection mechanisms, and anti-corruption in procurement, amongst others. Inputs collected at the conference will be taken on board at the Sixth Session of the Conference of the States Parties to the United Nations Convention against Corruption, which is to be held in early November 2015 in St. Petersburg, Russia. 

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Anti-corruption strategies are a country’s comprehensive anti-corruption policy document to coordinate national anti-corruption action.

They can be useful tools to articulate a long-term vision against corruption when developed in consultation with a wide range of stakeholders.

In the Asia-Pacific region, most countries have drafted an anti-corruption strategy, an effort often driven by the commitments taken to implement the preventive measures prescribed by the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC).

However, the lack of implementation and monitoring of anti-corruption strategies has raised questions on their effectiveness in practice. Recognising this caveat, the United Nations Development Programme Bangkok Regional Hub (UNDP), with the support of the Global Anti-corruption Initiative, as well as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) have partnered in helping countries in the region in developing and monitoring strategies.

The report Anti-Corruption Strategies: Understanding What Works, What Doesn’t, and Why? (Lessons Learned from the Asia-Pacific Region) reviews the experiences of 14 countries in the region–Afghanistan, Australia, Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Thailand, and Vietnam–in designing, implementing, and monitoring anti-corruption strategies as well as the drivers for developing these strategies.

UNDP believes that engaging a wide range of stakeholders, beyond government–private sector, civil society as well as local communities, including traditionally marginalized people–is essential to increase the possibilities of successful development and implementation of the strategy.

In June 2015, a UNDP-UNODC team from Bangkok Regional Hub supported the Office of the Ombudsman of the Philippines in organizing a workshop as a follow up to a November 2014 “Capacity Assessment of Anti-Corruption Infrastructure”. The findings and recommendations of the capacity assessment were presented to and validated by key stakeholders, including the Office of the Ombudsman and the Office of the President, the UNCAC Technical Committee, and representatives of civil society and academia.

The follow-up workshop provided an opportunity to initiate discussions to develop a “Philippine National Action Plan Against Corruption”, which was a key recommendation of the capacity assessment. The UNDP-UNODC mission team highlighted lessons learnt from other countries in developing and implementing national anti-corruption strategies/action plans. Particular attention was given to the process and investment in time required to develop action plans, the importance of introducing indicators and measurement tools to evaluate achievements over time, and the opportunity offered by UNCAC as the overarching framework.

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The Office of the Chief of Government collaborated with the National Anti-Corruption Authority to organize a national expert meeting in Tunis on 30-31 July with the support of UNDP-ACIAC and in coordination with UNDP Tunisia. The meeting reconvened the inter-governmental committee in charge of drafting anti-corruption bills in line with the UN Convention against Corruption, and enabled it to conduct a substantive revision of the three bills it had developed last year with the support of UNDP-ACIAC on “asset declaration”, “illicit enrichment” and “whistleblower protection”. The meeting also helped ensure stronger coherence among those bills and enabled the formulation of possible policy options on key issues that have been raised in the framework of related consultations that were held in the course of 2014 and 2015, within the Government, and also with civil society and other stakeholders.

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