Corruption is a major development challenge. It impacts all five pillars of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – people, prosperity, planet, peace, and partnerships. It is a significant bottleneck to achieving sustainable development in all its three dimensions – economic, social, and environmental.
Every year the developing world loses more than US$1 trillion in illicit outflows
[1] through government corruption, criminal activity, commercial tax evasion and mispriced commercial transactions. Many forms of illicit financial flows (IFFs) divert resources away from development efforts. These resources could otherwise be used to ensure that everyone has equal access to basic services like education and health, with dignity and without engaging in corruption.
Anti-corruption efforts, including the timely return of stolen assets, can significantly contribute to accelerating progress on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In particular, SDG 16 and its targets on reducing corruption, developing effective, accountable and transparent institutions, ensuring responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision making, and strengthening access to information are not only valuable and important aspiration in their own right, they are also important conditions for a successful achievement of the entire sustainable development agenda. Moreover, the United Nations Conventions against Corruption (UNCAC), with its 186 parties (as of 26 June 2018) is the only legally binding universal anti-corruption instrument. The effective implementation of its comprehensive provisions can make an important contribution to the 2030 Agenda.
This high-level session has the main objective of sharing experiences, good practices, and challenges in terms of building synergies between anti-corruption and asset recovery efforts and the implementation of 2030 Agenda.
The panel will be comprised of representatives from governments, UN agencies and other international organisations, the private sector, and civil society. The facilitated discussion will give participants the opportunity to contribute and discuss on a range of issues:
What are the challenges regarding implementing Goal 16 and its anti-corruption targets? What are the linkages between development financing on one hand and, fighting corruption, preventing illicit financial flows and asset recovery on the other? How can the implementation of UNCAC contribute to accelerating progress in achieving the SDGs? and What are the different roles of the public sector, the private sector, civil society, and international organisations for effectively integrating anti-corruption efforts in the SDG implementation?
The facilitated discussion will provide insights into the way forward for key stakeholders: public sector, private sector, civil society, and international actors, and into how each of them can contribute to anti-corruption efforts (e.g. mainstreaming, measuring, monitoring) and how they can support and build synergies with each other, so as to address the issues of corruption and asset recovery more comprehensively and accelerate progress on the SDGs.
[1] http://www.gfintegrity.org/issue/illicit-financial-flows/
