Global Compact Network Kenya, as a convener of the private sector in Kenya, has supported the Government in drafting, publishing, and publicizing various national anti-corruption policies and continues to influence the legislative ecosystem as a way of strengthening business integrity. In the absence of legislation, businesses in Kenya championed the Code of Ethics for Businesses in Kenya as an initiative to promote and enhance the ethics and integrity of business conduct in line with the Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anti- corruption. This collective action initiative was endorsed in 2012 and acted as an integrity road map for more than 800 businesses that are signatories to the Code in the absence of specific relevant legislation. It now acts as a complementary tool to the legal frameworks that have since stemmed from the Bribery Act of 2016. Kenya’s Bribery Act of 2016 places obligations on public and private entities to put in place procedures that are appropriate to their size, scale and nature of operations for prevention of bribery and corruption. It is an offence for an entity to fail to put in place the bribery and corruption prevention procedures as required under the Act. The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) is required under the Act to assist public and private entities to develop and implement the procedures for prevention of bribery and corruption. The Kenyan EACC has developed guidelines that private entities are required to adopt. Through the collective action, Kenya has drafted and enacted the Bribery Regulations and Guidelines of 2022 to operationalize the Bribery Act through a multi-stakeholder consultative process. The regulations lay out the procedures and mechanism for effective implementation of the Bribery Act while the guidelines assist private and public entities in the preparation of procedures for the prevention of bribery and corruption.
Source: The Bribery Act, 2016 https://www.globalcompactkenya.org/index.php/knowledge-center/publication-and-resources/bribery-act-2016; The Bribery Guidelines, 2022, https://eacc.go.ke/default/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/PDF.-Guidelines-under-Bribery-Act.pdf; Whistleblower Protection Bill of 2021, https://kenyalaw.org/kl/fileadmin/pdfdownloads/bills/2021/TheWhistleblowerProtectionBill_2021.pdf; Capital Markets (Whistleblower) Regulations 2022, https://new.kenyalaw.org/akn/ke/act/ln/2022/65/eng@2022-12-31; Code of Ethics for Business in Kenya, https://www.globalcompactkenya.org/index.php/knowledge-center/publication-and-resources/code-ethics-business-kenya.
