Sievierodonetsk, Luhansk Oblast, 6-7 December 2019 – Marking the International Day Against Corruption on December 9, the UN Recovery and Peacebuilding Programme launched an educational campaign among students of law faculties in Luhansk Oblast, aiming to empower young future lawyers with anti-corruption instruments. This year not only students but also pupils from schools in Luhansk Oblast joined in the campaign, which had the financial support of the European Union.

Overall, about 200 students and pupils took part in the campaign. Guided by experts, they learned how to gauge the negative impact of corruption on the society and discussed further prospects for anti-corruption reforms in Ukraine and how to encourage zero tolerance of any kind of corrupt or unscrupulous activity.

Even though efforts to fight corruption in Ukraine are seeing some progress, Ukraine is still in the lower ranks of corruption watchdog Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index. In 2018 Ukraine rose by 5 points compared to the previous year to 32 points. Even so Ukraine is still only 120^th out of the 180 countries surveyed.

Participants listened to lectures on the history of corruption and successful anti-corruption cases and discussed anticorruption laws in Ukraine with NABU officials and forensic experts from the State Scientific Research Forensic Centre (SSRFC) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Luhansk Oblast.

“Launching an anti-corruption campaign in this young environment is very important, since the way that young people perceive the world around them and what values they have determines the future direction of our country,”  said Viktoriya Yegorova, an anti-corruption specialist of the UN Recovery and Peacebuilding Programme.

Olena Arsenteva, the dean of the law faculty of the East Ukrainian Volodymyr Dahl National University, where all of the campaign activities were held, also noted the importance of anti-corruption campaigns, stressing that such initiatives help foster zero tolerance for corruption.

“I believe that these events play a very significant role for pupils and students, since they help them grow certain behavioural patterns against corruption right now,” said Arsenteva. Not only does this help to establish a system of values in the society, it also helps increase the trust in the anti-corruption bodies and the government.”

This is the second year in a row that the UN Recovery and Peacebuilding Programme has launched an anti-corruption campaign for youngsters.  To test out their newly acquired knowledge, students and pupils took an anti-corruption quest and played an interactive game called “City against corruption” kindly provided by UNDP partners the USAID Support to Anti-Corruption Champion Institutions (SACCI) Programme.

Media enquiries:

Maksym Kytsiuk, Communications Associate, UN Recovery and Peacebuilding Programme, maksym.kytsiuk@undp.org, +380 63 576 1839

Background:

The UN Recovery and Peacebuilding Programme is being implemented by four UN agencies: The United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the UN Entity for Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment (UN Women), the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The programme is supported by 11 international partners: the European Union, the European Investment Bank, and the governments of the United Kingdom, Denmark, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland and Japan.