United Nations Celebrates its 76th birthday: international cooperation against corruption

The United Nations Day marks the day when the organization was founded. On the 24th of October – 76 years ago, the countries’ members gathered together to commemorate the end of the Second World War and signed a document to reassure their dedication to the principles of international cooperation. 

Anti-corruption is one of the most important areas of this cooperation. The Convention against Corruption has become the culmination of work and negotiations at all levels, and finally, put the fight for the integrity of institutions on the global agenda. It was signed in 2003 and adopted in 2005. The level of support it received, measured by the number of countries that had ratified (172), indicated both an awareness of the severity of the problem, as well as political commitment to implement it. 

The Convention has introduced a set of standards, measures, and rules that countries can apply to strengthen their legal and regulatory regimes to fight corruption. This document has special importance for the National Agency on Corruption Prevention because its critical focus is prevention – providing a framework to reduce the likelihood of corrupt practices. The countries which signed the documents also agreed to guarantee all the necessary support to anti-corruption bodies to make their work effective. 

As stated by Kofi Annan in the foreword to the Convention, if fully enforced, “this new instrument can make a real difference to the quality of life of millions of people around the world”.

And it already made a difference. It is difficult to overestimate the help of the NACP’s foreign partners and especially the UN’s role in establishing and promoting effective practices in preventing corruption that led to the development of Ukraine’s anti-corruption system in the last few years. Within the implementation of the UN Convention against Corruption, the electronic declaration register was developed, and the NACP was established and continued its work despite the pressure of vested interests. 

Changing the system and established practices requires time and an enormous amount of effort from the government and society. There is still a lot of work to be done. United Nations Day is the day when we remind ourselves of the main principles and the importance of international cooperation in order to achieve our main goal – build a democratic society without corruption.