Locations
Anti-Corruption
Focus Area
In the last decade, anti-corruption has been one of the fastest growing service areas worldwide. Preventing and addressing corruption and illicit financial flows (IFFs) are now an integral part of global, regional, and national development discourses. This has been due to the near-universal ratification of the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) by 190 countries and the growing importance of Governance and Anti-corruption in enhancing sustainable development. Corruption impedes progress on all the SDGs and undermines effective development cooperation and financing for development. Anti-corruption acts as an accelerator to achieve the SDGs, which rely on effective, transparent and inclusive governance mechanisms and institutions to meet the needs of all people, and it supports the legitimacy of public authorities, and trust in governance.
The Anti-Corruption for Peaceful and Inclusive Societies (ACPIS) global project, which is part of UNDP’s Governance for People and Planet (G4PP) Global Programme and works closely with the Global Policy Centre for Governance in Oslo where it is housed, is UNDP’s main vehicle for providing policy and programme support on anti-corruption and coordinating UNDP’s anti-corruption work both internally through UNDP regional hubs and country offices and externally with other relevant partners.
UNDP’s work on and integrated approach to anti-corruption have been instrumental in advancing the transparency, accountability and integrity agendas at global, regional and country levels. The ACPIS global project contributes to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development by integrating anti-corruption solutions in service delivery sectors; strengthening institutional capacity of government institutions, civil society organizations and the private sector to prevent and address corruption; leveraging technology and innovation for integrity and anti-corruption; enhancing capacities for collecting corruption statistics and measuring corruption and anti-corruption; facilitating knowledge-sharing on anti-corruption; and leading global advocacy on anti-corruption.
UNDP Takes the Lead in Supporting Efforts to Integrate Anti-Corruption, Transparency, Accountability and Integrity Through Six Service Lines:
Anti-corruption for effective service delivery;
Integrity for climate, biodiversity, and environment;
Anti-corruption for conflict prevention and peacebuilding;
Transparency and integrity in cities and local authorities;
Anti-corruption for economic governance and development financing; and
Empowering agents of change for anti-corruption.
Global Advocacy
ACPIS plays a lead role in global advocacy for anti-corruption through global, regional, and country-level events, including the major global anti-corruption fora, such as the Conference of States Parties to UNCAC and the International Anti-Corruption Conference. Over the years, ACPIS has successfully organized events, including high-level events, on a range of current and emerging themes alongside its longstanding partners, most recently on corruption measurement. UNDP through ACPIS also contributes to relevant global anti-corruption mechanisms and processes and leads in rolling out campaigns for commemorating the International Anti-Corruption Day together with UNODC.
Knowledge Products
As a knowledge broker and facilitator of anti-corruption knowledge, ACPIS promotes knowledge exchange through multiple arenas. Being at the center of various networks and discussions related to anti-corruption and development, ACPIS has launched numerous anti-corruption knowledge products, demand-driven online courses, and facilitated learning exchange through South-South Cooperation.
Policy and Programme Support
ACPIS provides integrated policy and programme support to around 60 UNDP Country Offices (COs) and programming countries across different regions, both directly and through UNDP's regional hubs and service centres, by strengthening national anti-corruption capacities of governments and other stakeholders to shape national anti-corruption policies and programmes, with a view of building open, agile, and accountable institutions. For instance, with support from ACPIS, Uzbekistan continued to shape its anti-corruption policy in line with national priorities and international best practices. The implementation of the ‘Preventing Corruption for Effective, Accountable, and Transparent Government Institutions’ (PCEAT) project provided some key changes, which include, based on its final evaluation, empowerment of key institutions and civil society, enhancement of national Anti-Corruption agencies, and support of the nation’s anti-corruption reform process making Uzbekistan a regional leader in Anti-Corruption efforts. Despite the project completion, ACPIS continues to provide advisory support to Uzbekistan and has actively supported resource mobilization on anti-corruption, which resulted in secured funding from the European Union.
Through the Anti-Corruption Innovation Initiative, ACPIS also provides country-level support to nine countries across Africa and Asia-Pacific with the goal of deploying digital solutions for transparency, integrity, and anti-corruption in various service delivery sectors, including environmental resource management (Sri Lanka and Uganda), health (Tanzania and Vietnam), justice (DRC and Rwanda), procurement (Nigeria), and public service delivery (Bangladesh and Nepal).
Corruption Measurement
The discourse surrounding corruption measurement has until recently been dominated by arguments claiming corruption is a complex phenomenon that has no unanimously agreed definition. However, with the advent of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC), which clearly highlights 11 corruption offenses and SDG 16’s aim to measure illicit financial flows and bribery, the question is no longer ‘whether corruption can be measured’ but ‘whether and when countries will consistently measure corruption to track and monitor the progress on tackling corruption’. With more data, evidence, methodologies, and guidance developed during the last two decades or so (such as the UNODC-UNDP Manual on Corruption Surveys), the issue seems not to be the complexity of statistics or international comparability, but rather that Corruption measurement methods require political will, capacity, and resources to produce and reproduce data and use them for policy reforms.
As a result of the previous work on corruption measurement and the recent developments further propelling corruption measurement work, ACPIS launched a joint initiative on corruption measurement with Saudi Arabia’s Oversight and Anti-corruption Authority in 2023 (Nazaha). The initiative aims to enhance the international community’s capacity to combat corruption, through the development of evidence-based methodologies and tools that will support countries to improve their overall anti-corruption policy environment.
Partners
The ACPIS global project has forged strong partnerships with donor partners such as Sida, Norad, UK FCDO, BMZ/GIZ, and the US State Department; program partners such as Transparency International, U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre, Basel Institute on Governance, and UN agencies such as UNODC, WHO, UNSSC and others. In addition, UNDP’s global anti-corruption team actively engages with UNDP Regional Hubs, Country Offices (COs), and UNDP’s governance teams spanning all regions, as well as with UNDP’s Global Policy Centres. The ACPIS global team also works closely with other UNDP teams, including the Chief Digital Office, Conflict Prevention, Peacebuilding, Responsive Institutions, Health and SDG Integration teams to better synergize and coordinate efforts to integrate anti-corruption into the SDGs.
Our Anti-Corruption Team
Anga Timilsina, Global Programme Advisor on Anti-Corruption
Aida Arutyunova, Programme Manager
Karen Dominique Brillantes, Research and Knowledge Management Analyst
Dino Cehic, Intern