News

Corruption remains a major hurdle to human development in Asia and the Pacific, where strong national policies to tackle corruption are often faltering due to a lack of political will and poor coordination, says a new report published by the United Nations Development Programme today.

The report, released to coincide with the International Anti-Corruption Day, is titled Anti-Corruption Strategies: Understanding What Works, What Doesn’t, and Why?  

Anti-corruption strategies “often lack teeth when they are not fully integrated into national development plans,”the report notes as one of its critical findings.

Anchoring anti-corruption with national development plans is a pre-condition to encourage a whole-of-government approach for human development, it says.

Evidence shows that progress is slow in the region, with corruption remaining a major hurdle to development. Public sector corruption is perceived as significant in 64 percent of the countries in the region (Transparency International). And it is estimated that about 40 percent of investment in electricity, water and sanitation is lost to corruption.

According to the report, anti-corruption strategies have sometimes been mistaken as a generic roadmap that can be developed by a few bright minds in government to set overly ambitious goals.

The UNDP experience shows that it is essential to involve a wide range of actors to build ownership and ensure the effectiveness of strategies adopted.  This can reduce the vulnerability of reform efforts to changes in political leadership by empowering the public to monitor these commitments, the report observes.

This echoes the global call for “Breaking the corruption chain”, which is the main message of the International Anti-Corruption Day, globally observed every year on 9 December.

“On this year’s observance of the International Anti-Corruption Day, we call again on people everywhere to get involved in ‘Breaking the Corruption Chain’. Next year the world will agree a new post-2015 sustainable development agenda. Our aim is to empower individuals and catalyse governments, the private sector and civil society to help lift millions out of poverty, protect the planet and achieve shared prosperity and dignity for all. Eliminating corruption and its harmful impacts will be crucial to our future well-being,” says UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on 9 December 2014.

Another common pitfall of anti-corruption strategies is the lack of attention to implementation, monitoring and evaluation, says the report.

Government and development partners can be occasionally more concerned with drafting an anti-corruption strategy to fulfill international obligations under the UN Convention against corruption than with ensuring its implementation.

The report documents lessons learned from 14 countries, featuring Afghanistan, Australia, Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Thailand and Viet Nam. It is a joint initiative of the UNDP Bangkok Regional Hub and the Global Anti-Corruption Initiative.

The report draws out five valuable lessons that can guide a country’s anti-corruption efforts:

1. Political changes are an opportunity and a challenge for the sustainability of anti-corruption strategies.
2. Measuring corruption is important, but only if governments make effective use of the results.
3. Regular data collection is an integral component of an anti-corruption strategy.
4. An anti-corruption agency is only as effective as the level of political support it enjoys from different branches of government.
5. Anti-corruption agencies in the region remain weak in monitoring and evaluating their strategies.

The report is available for download on UNDP Asia-Pacific website at http://on.undp.org/FvYyl.

Read The United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message on International Anti-Corruption Day on 9 December 2014.  

For more information on the International Anti-Corruption Day, please visit www.anticorruptionday.org.

Read more

The UNDP supports a series of workshops organized jointly between SIWI, Cap-Net, LA-WETnet, and the Democratic Governance area of the Regional Centre for Latin America and the Caribbean (through the Global Anti-Corruption Initiative- GAIN).

The training workshops have been directed towards professional leaders, coming from 11 countries in Latin America, Spain, and Cabo Verde, and representing educational entities, non-governmental and governmental organizations. The goal of the workshops is to strengthen the foundations for change through greater knowledge and awareness about concepts like integrity, transparency, accountability, and the fight against corruption in the water sector.

This implies the sensitization of decision-making groups (entities in charge of public policies and laws), through advocacy of integrity and capacity building. This opportunity should be extended to other relevant groups, such as public and private businesses, consumers, non-governmental organizations that work in the promotion of integrity. The same effort should be put on multilateral organisms that are involved with the sector through loans (Inter-American Development Bank, World Bank and Latin American Development Bank), given that if these organisms opt for uniform mechanisms for the fight and promotion of integrity, it would signify an additional legislative and policy layer for controlling corruption.

Click here to watch Costa Rica experience.

Read more

The Dominican Republic UNDP Country Office supports the participation of young Dominicans in public institutions in the country.

Youth Auditors Project, conducted by the Dominican Republic Chamber of Auditors and UNDP, aimed to contribute to capacity building of human resources from a different perspective. Before joining the workplace, 23 youth received training in auditing and law in order to effectively perform their work in the Chamber of Accounts.

These innovative and inexpensive initiatives promote youth inclusion in different work and decision-making spaces; and help to develop their skills and leadership, in order to strengthen democratic culture and transparent management..

Since 2011, with the support of the UNDP Regional Center for Latin America and the Caribbean there have been 2 regional Social Audit workshops (one for Latin America and one for the Caribbean involving 20 UNDP Country Offices) and 5 National replications throughout the region (Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic and Belize). So far 200 young leaders in Latin America and the Caribbean, representing over 80 youth organizations of 20 countries have benefitted from this training, in total.

Click here to watch video.

Read more

This innovative Project consists of the development and implementation of three applications created by young adults during the first Hackathon of Open Government, which took place during July of the current year. The applications will promote the empowerment of the citizenry and Government accountability, thus fomenting transparency.

The proposal, presented by the Citizen Participation, Transparency and Anti-Corruption Secretariat of El Salvador, was selected out of 30 ideas coming from 17 countries, in the Call for Innovation in Latin America and the Caribbean launched from the UNDP Innovation Facility in the Regional Centre for Latin America and the Caribbean.

The Secretariat will receive seed funding to develop applications like Gob Score, through which the Executive can be measured in relation to the actions of open government, the quantity of complaints that they receive, and citizen participation. This application can be broadened to evaluate the institutional performance in themes such as accountability.

Another application, called “Camino a la U” (“Road to U”) allows the population, especially the youth, to obtain information regarding the authorized degrees that they can study, options of study based on results from aptitude tests and information on scholarship access.

Infoútil 2.0 will work to improve mobile access of the Portal InfoÚtil, through which users will be able to Rank the available databases, request databases of interest, and make citizen complaints to the competent institutions..

Click here to watch video.

Read more

09 Dec 2014

Corruption remains a major hurdle to human development in Asia and the Pacific, where strong national policies to tackle corruption are often faltering due to a lack of political will and poor coordination, says a new report published by the United Nations Development Programme today.

The report, released to coincide with the International Anti-Corruption Day, is titled Anti-Corruption Strategies: Understanding What Works, What Doesn’t, and Why?  

Anti-corruption strategies “often lack teeth when they are not fully integrated into national development plans,”the report notes as one of its critical findings.

Anchoring anti-corruption with national development plans is a pre-condition to encourage a whole-of-government approach for human development, it says.

Evidence shows that progress is slow in the region, with corruption remaining a major hurdle to development. Public sector corruption is perceived as significant in 64 percent of the countries in the region (Transparency International). And it is estimated that about 40 percent of investment in electricity, water and sanitation is lost to corruption.

According to the report, anti-corruption strategies have sometimes been mistaken as a generic roadmap that can be developed by a few bright minds in government to set overly ambitious goals.

The UNDP experience shows that it is essential to involve a wide range of actors to build ownership and ensure the effectiveness of strategies adopted.  This can reduce the vulnerability of reform efforts to changes in political leadership by empowering the public to monitor these commitments, the report observes.

This echoes the global call for “Breaking the corruption chain”, which is the main message of the International Anti-Corruption Day, globally observed every year on 9 December.

“On this year’s observance of the International Anti-Corruption Day, we call again on people everywhere to get involved in ‘Breaking the Corruption Chain’. Next year the world will agree a new post-2015 sustainable development agenda. Our aim is to empower individuals and catalyse governments, the private sector and civil society to help lift millions out of poverty, protect the planet and achieve shared prosperity and dignity for all. Eliminating corruption and its harmful impacts will be crucial to our future well-being,” says UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon on 9 December 2014.

Another common pitfall of anti-corruption strategies is the lack of attention to implementation, monitoring and evaluation, says the report.

Government and development partners can be occasionally more concerned with drafting an anti-corruption strategy to fulfill international obligations under the UN Convention against corruption than with ensuring its implementation.

The report documents lessons learned from 14 countries, featuring Afghanistan, Australia, Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Thailand and Viet Nam. It is a joint initiative of the UNDP Bangkok Regional Hub and the Global Anti-Corruption Initiative.

The report draws out five valuable lessons that can guide a country’s anti-corruption efforts:

1. Political changes are an opportunity and a challenge for the sustainability of anti-corruption strategies.
2. Measuring corruption is important, but only if governments make effective use of the results.
3. Regular data collection is an integral component of an anti-corruption strategy.
4. An anti-corruption agency is only as effective as the level of political support it enjoys from different branches of government.
5. Anti-corruption agencies in the region remain weak in monitoring and evaluating their strategies.

The report is available for download on UNDP Asia-Pacific website at http://on.undp.org/FvYyl.

Read The United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message on International Anti-Corruption Day on 9 December 2014.  

For more information on the International Anti-Corruption Day, please visit www.anticorruptionday.org.

Read more