Many collective action initiatives and fora on anti-corruption involving business have been initiated over the last 15 to 20 years at global level providing an important space for exchange on good practice and joint commitments on anti-corruption. This has led to an unprecedented prominence of anti-corruption on the global agenda and contributed to the development of important global frameworks such as the UN Global Compact’s 10th Principle on Anti-Corruption, the UN Convention Against Corruption or the OECD Foreign Bribery Convention. In addition, smaller collective action initiatives have developed influential standards such as Transparency International’s Business Principles for Countering Bribery or worked on sector-specific solutions.
While a lot has been achieved through collective action initiatives on local and global level over the past decade, significant cases of business failure to tackle corruption keep making headlines. This has prompted the notion that after an important phase of developing anti-corruption codes and guidance, the time for action has come. Concurrently, the Sustainable Development Goals, and SDG 16 in particular, provide a global framework and a clear societal expectation towards business to turn commitments into action by 2030.
How can global collective action initiatives address this need and become a catalyst for concrete impact on the ground?
Session Rapporteur:
Katja Bechtel
