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Jordan goes “beyond the minimum”

jordan-cover-uncacJORDAN has completed the national review of its implementation of Chapter II of the UN Convention against Corruption dealing with preventive measures. This includes related policies and practices; establishment of specialized bodies; reforming of the civil service; adoption of codes of conduct for public officials; integrity in the judiciary and prosecution; integrity in public procurement and public financial management; public reporting and access to information; transparency in the private sector; the participation of society and prevention of money laundering.

Under the leadership of the Jordanian Anti-Corruption Commission (JACC), Jordan adopted a participatory approach in conducting the review, where a national team was formed consisting of officials from concerned ministries and agencies as well as representatives of the private sector and civil society. The national team was divided into four groups based on their expertise. Each group reviewed a selection of the aforementioned preventive measures, while rapporteurs from JACC were assigned to facilitate the process and support each group, with technical assistance provided by UNDP’s regional project on Anti-Corruption and Integrity in the Arab Countries (ACIAC).

The participatory process was launched on September 2013 following a training organized by ACIAC in partnership with JACC. The training provided participants with knowledge and skills necessary to conduct a comprehensive and effective review of the selected measures.

The final report was finalized and launched in a ceremony on 22 November in the presence of key Jordanian officials and representatives of national stakeholders and UNDP.

The report may be accessed at: http://www.jacc.gov.jo/Portals/0/JordanNationalReviewofCorruptionPrevention.pdf

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‘Wealth of local talent’ in new UNDP Regional Hub for the Arab States

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HELEN Clark, UNDP Administrator, and H.E. Mr. Nasser Judeh, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and Expatriate Affairs of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, officially inaugurated UNDP’s Regional Hub for the Arab States in Amman, on 8 November 2015.

This is the latest regional Hub to be established by UNDP following the ones in Panama, Istanbul, Bangkok, and Addis Ababa. The Amman Hub aims to provide relevant, responsive and timely support to country offices across the Arab region and includes projects related to climate change, energy and disaster risk reduction, gender equality, anti-corruption and elections, among others.

“Amman is an ideal location for the Hub,” said Ms. Clark in her speech at the inauguration. “Its central location in the region, along with its wealth of local talent, are of enormous benefit to UNDP’s work across the Arab States.”

The Hub also has a sub-office for various regional projects located in Beirut, and also another sub-office in Cairo tasked primarily with liaison with the league of Arab states. With more than 90 staff, the Hub will seek to advance sustainable human development in the region in light of the newly adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and support inclusiveness and resilience in the region in the face of crises and other development challenges.

Also present at the inauguration were Sima Bahous the assistant secretary-general, assistant administrator and regional director of the regional bureau for Arab States, and Khaled Abdel Shafi the newly appointed director of the Hub.

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From Open Government Partnership to Open States Partnership – The Chilean Experience

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Writer: Rocio Noriega, Governance, Ethics and Transparency Advisor, UNDP Chile Country Office

The relationship between citizens and legislators is undergoing a process of strong tensions and divergences. This represents a core challenge for any democratic regime. Even if the declining trust in institutions is becoming a trend sustained over the past decade around the world, it has deepened with swift and greater public exposure to cases in which lack of probity and transparency involves legislators, hence diminishing trust in parliaments and parliamentarians.

In this context, the Open Government Partnership’s (OGP) Summits have become one of the most crucial events related to open government, creating collaborative work between governments and civil society with the objective to improve public policies. This year, the Summit was held in Mexico, with an impressive turnout: more than 1,500 participants from 69 countries attended (from civil society, the academy and government). The importance of open parliaments was shown through the participation of 61 parliamentarians.

Amongst the Working Groups of the OGP, the Legislative Openness Working Group (LOWG) is particularly relevant since it is a key factor to implement governmental action plans that embody legislative issues. The LOWG was created in the Global Summit in London 2013, as a response to a request made by Chilean Senator Larrain, which asked for the inclusion of parliaments in OGP, comprehending the importance of fulfilling government action plans. This group is coordinated by the Chilean Congress and the National Democratic Institute. Now, two years later, during the Global Summit in Mexico, a legislative track was included in the agenda; bringing five panels on the topic of open parliament that congregated large audiences.

The aforementioned trust crisis is not an exclusively Chilean problem, it is occurring in many countries. Therefore, initiatives like the LOWG, show great efforts in sharing good practices of open parliament and a space for legislative powers to seek support from their peers and civil society to create an open parliament annual plan or introduce reforms to their daily work. Steps such as these will facilitate that decisions made by Parliaments will be more closely linked to the needs of the people and thus will contribute in regaining long-lost trust.

UNDP Chile has worked with the National Congress since August 2013 supporting LOWG’s efforts. The office developed a methodology inclusive of civil society to elaborate the Parliament Openness Action Plan for Congress. This work with civil society continues evaluating the implementation of this Action Plan. To assure the participation of civil society actors the project developed a collaborative virtual platform.

Since Open Parliaments are not a formal track of OGP, the Independent Reporting Mechanism used to ensure the accountability and quality of the action plans is not applicable for parliaments. This is an issue that needs to be addressed in the future when they become an official participant.

In Chile, open parliament means increasing availability of public information through the homologation of the access granted in aspects regarding information between the Senate and the Chamber of Representatives; strengthening standards for transparency, ethics, probity and accountability, and generating mechanisms to promote dialogue with the citizens during legislative process. These activities were expressed through ten commitments in the Action Plan.

Some of these commitments and other Chile UNDP’s proposals were also introduced in the probity and ethics bill that will reform the Constitutional Organic Law of Congress in order to improve probity, ethics and accountability standards. Three of the most important proposals are the strengthening of the Ethics and Transparency Legislative Commissions, the establishment of an Ethics and Parliamentary Transparency Office, and the institutionalization of the Bicameral Group for Transparency as a legislative commission.

In conclusion, for OGP to be complete it needs to “open up” to other powers of the State and at all levels. The efforts by the working groups are not sufficient to development significant commitments to serve citizens around the world. Also, in the Summit most participants agreed that OGP is an excellent forum to contribute and achieve the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goal #16, and as UNDP colleague, Julia Keutgen, stated, “parliaments are powerful agents of change and have a key role to play in the new SDGs development agenda”.

Legislative powers have to establish a fluent dialogue with civil society; and if this will ever materialize, it needs to begin with few and achievable commitments in parliament´s action plans. Plus, to begin an action plan it is essential to have support, so as Deputy Patricio Vallespin affirmed during his intervention in the Mexico Summit, parliaments should not be afraid of asking institutions such as UNDP for assistance in the creation and implementation of their action plans. Consequently, we should encourage legislative powers to continue their work in open parliament, developing a better and more accountable relation with civil society, being more transparent, preventing corruption and fight against it, in order to recuperate vanishing public trust, thus building strong institutions for a better democracy.

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The biggest anti-corruption summit in Ukraine’s history is in the spotlight

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The international anti-corruption conference was organized by the Anti-Corruption Task Force of the National Reform Council lead by the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine. UNDP became one of the core co-organizers for the event that gathered state officials, international practitioners, civic activists, and business-people from across the globe.

One of the main tasks of the Conference was to take honest stock of developments in the anti-corruption sphere in the last18 months, to assess the progress, but also to discuss remaining gaps and deficiencies that result in wide citizens’ dissatisfaction with the pace of reform.

The Conference became a discussion panel for looking beyond the new legislation and emerging institutions into actual preventive and investigative work.  The agenda of the Conference may be found here.

Click here for more information and link to the original article. 

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Parliamentarians meet at the UNCAC Conference in St. Petersburg to mobilize best practices

2015-11-01 Pacific groupCoSP.UNDP logo

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 “6th 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.