UNIS Vienna
Vienna, 12 December 2023 – The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the United Nations Global Compact (UN Global Compact) launched their first-ever joint project aimed at promoting business integrity and fostering collective action to strengthen anti-corruption policies, legal frameworks and measures applicable to the private sector.
The project, entitled “Uniting Leaders for Business Integrity”, seeks to build capacities to enhance business integrity in accordance with the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) and Principle Ten of the UN Global Compact. It will be implemented at the global, regional and national levels, leveraging the mandates, expertise and networks of both institutions to achieve maximum impact.
UNODC has been delivering
projects on business integrity since 2011 and is currently providing support to companies in line with UNCAC in 17 countries globally. Since 2019, the awareness-raising, institution- and capacity-building efforts of UNODC on business integrity have reached over 37,000 stakeholders.
A special initiative of the UN Secretariat, the UN Global Compact calls on companies to align their operations and strategies with ten principles in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption. UNODC is the guardian of Principle Ten of the UN Global Compact, urging businesses to work against corruption in all its forms, including extortion and bribery.
With over 22,600 participant companies and presence in 165 countries
[1], the UN Global Compact is the largest corporate sustainability movement in the world. Participant companies publicly report on their efforts on an annual basis. It is comprised of regional hubs and a growing community of companies organized in local networks. Over a decade of experience in collective action has shaped the
UN Global Compact Anti-Corruption Collective Action Playbook.
Building on the common vision of UNODC and the UN Global Compact, this joint project aims to galvanize the role of the private sector in the fight against corruption, especially in developing countries, and tackle corruption through a multisectoral approach. By fostering collective action to strengthen policy and legislative frameworks that incentivize business integrity and penalize wrongdoing, and by supporting companies in adopting and implementing anti-corruption standards, the project contributes to the implementation of the first-ever United States Strategy on Countering Corruption and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, along with UNCAC and Principle Ten of the UN Global Compact.
Among the project’s specific objectives is the publication of the second edition of
An Anti-Corruption Ethics and Compliance Programme for Business: A Practical Guide to help build the capacity of companies in designing and applying measures to enhance effective governance and mitigate corruption risks. The project also aims to leverage data from the UNCAC Implementation Review Mechanism and UN Global Compact’s Communication on Progress to strengthen business integrity, and to promote business integrity through the UNODC Anti-Corruption Regional Hubs, the UN Global Compact regional hubs and local networks.
In tandem with these objectives, the project will support selected countries to develop policies and regulations for business integrity through collective action involving governments, companies and other relevant stakeholders, such as civil society and youth.
In addition, the project plans to share information on trends, common challenges and innovative solutions at regional and global forums. This year, UNODC and the UN Global Compact hosted a
Private Sector Forum at the tenth session of the Conference of the States Parties (CoSP10) to UNCAC on 11 and 12 December in Atlanta, USA.
The project will align with the UN’s focus on gender equality by designing and implementing gender-sensitive business integrity strategies such as conducting a gender analysis, promoting gender-sensitive codes of conduct and corruption risk assessments, and delivering gender-responsive awareness-raising and capacity-building activities.
The project “Uniting Leaders for Business Integrity” is funded by the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs of the United States of America.
