Connect With Us at 2024’s Biggest Anti-Corruption Event
Partner organizations from around the globe will soon descend upon Vilnius, Lithuania, to join this year’s biggest anti-corruption event: Transparency International’s International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC), from Tuesday, June 18 to Friday, June 21. CIPE’s Anti-Corruption & Governance Center (ACGC) will support events planned by our partner organizations while also hosting some of our own that we hope will stimulate conversation.
It follows an energetic gathering of anti-corruption advocates convened by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris in March that featured a strong emphasis on the private sector, and a highly successful Conference of State Parties in Atlanta in December 2023, which resulted in governments adopting several important United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) resolutions. The 2024 edition of the IACC will be focused primarily on civil society.
Convening the ever-growing ecosystem of anti-corruption advocates is perhaps the most important feature of the IACC. The conference provides ample space to compare notes, share insights, and explore opportunities to connect the dots and advance our joint work.
The theme, Standing Up for Integrity, is as much a call to action as it is a description of the anti-corruption community’s evolving thinking in recent years. Over four days, participants will address a range of topics in support of more effective anti-corruption efforts, including scrutinizing the roles of technology, business integrity, democracy, kleptocracy, green finance, civic space and global security.
One underlying current is the ever-present question of whether integrity is best bolstered through regulatory action or smart self-regulation, and to what extent the two approaches complement each other. There is broad agreement that both are needed to help societies succeed in critically important tasks such as ensuring economic security, bolstering democracy, safeguarding against kleptocracy and maintaining peace. But how best to tailor different mechanisms across varied contexts remains an open question.
Panels of particular relevance for ACGC and CIPE include:
- CIPE will host a workshop focused on Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) on Wednesday, June 20. It will focus on identifying effective strategies to enhance SMEs’ impact on governance and integrity standards, drawing from examples across Lithuania, Nigeria and Ukraine. Panelists will discuss challenges and success stories to inspire productive engagement between the business community and government, and pursue opportunities to advance collective action. The workshop is part of a U.S. State Department program aimed at catalyzing business forces to fight corruption. CIPE implements this program together with the United Nations Office for Crime and Drugs (UNODC), the OECD, the Infrastructure Transparency Initiative, and Accountability Lab.
- UNODC and the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) will host a Business Integrity 2.0 workshop, which is complementary to one of CIPE’s flagship initiatives, the Ethics 1st program. Ethics 1st identifies incentives that guide the private sector in applying localized business integrity solutions useful in specific markets and geographies. Successful participants emerge better equipped to partner with foreign investors and larger businesses, and to handle the associated compliance burdens.
- Transparency International will host a workshop titled New Tools to Fight Foreign Bribery, which will feature ACGC Deputy Director Michele Crymes as a panelist. Participants will discuss fighting the ever-present risk of bribery through tools such as the decades-old U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the newly minted U.S. Foreign Extortion Prevention Act. Both are important for governments, civil society, and the private sector. CIPE is looking forward to contributing to the discussion with thoughts on how to best move forward.
- Other CIPE leaders featured at IACC include Ekaterina Lysova, program director for business integrity and anti-corruption in Europe and Eurasia, who will speak on a panel titled Galvanizing the Private Sector: Empowering Small Business to Conduct Monitoring, Advocacy through Collective Action. Senior Anti-Corruption Advisor Cynthia Gabriel will be on the stage for Plenary I: Kleptocrats, Criminals, Traffickers, And Accomplices: It Is Time to Close Their Global Enterprise. IACC will feature Program Director Lola Adekanye, leader of CIPE’s Business Integrity and Anti-Corruption programs in Africa, on two panels. One is From Red Flags to Green Lights: Business Integrity Solutions for Public Procurement and the other is Media’s Role in Defending Democracy and Human Rights Against Corruption in Africa.
ACGC is helping to organize many other exciting workshops, addressing topics such as kleptocracy, beneficial ownership transparency, leveraging technology, human rights, and procurement. ACGC’s approach explores the most effective ways to harness the power of collective action while making use of a helpful mix of regulatory action and incentives to self-regulate.
All of us at ACGC anticipate connecting and reconnecting with friends and allies and to brainstorm about opportunities to make additional progress. Get in touch! Coffee or a chat are easy to organize. Please feel free to contact us at acgc@cipe.org.
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