Esteemed Members and the Community at large,
Today is International Anti-Corruption Day (IACD) (https://www.un.org/en/observances/anti-corruption-day), The 2022 IACD seeks to highlight the crucial link between anti-corruption and peace, security, and development which imply the start of efforts to mark the twentieth anniversary of the UN Convention against Corruption (UNCAC). The theme of this year focuses on UNCAC at 20 and is “Uniting the World Against Corruption”. The Engineering Community in WFEO under the Committee for Anti-corruption (CAC) is marking this Day with “Anti-Corruption Awareness campaigns, Education and training of Stakeholders”. We acknowledge the unprecedented impacts on economic and societal systems brought by the global effects of COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. This has tremendously affected the pace, scope and mode of our Anti-Corruption Strategy roll out at national, regional and continental levels.
The Committee encourages all professional engineering institutions to implement the anti-corruption awareness advocacy and prevention mandates at both institutional and community levels. This can be achieved through activities to include individual networking meetings for knowledge sharing by either physical or virtual or both conferences, seminars and workshops. Through this approach our members have continued to participate in the ISO activities particularly the WG2 on revision of ISO 37001 related to anti-bribery management systems and standards on fraud and I take this opportunity to congratulate them all.
Our strategic alliance with the Global Infrastructure Anti-Corruption Centre (GIACC) continues to provide free online training resources on anti-corruption training modules and manuals https://giaccentre.org/training-resources/, Project Anti-Corruption System (PACS) designed to assist the prevention of corruption in infrastructure projects with standards meant to impact on project phases https://giaccentre.org/pacs-overview/ and access to 25 anti-corruption benchmarks https://giaccentre.org/commonwealth-benchmarks/ containing the best practice actionable measures for professionals. All provide advice and tools to help organisations and individuals in both the public and the private sectors understand, prevent and deal with corruption.
WFEO CAC reiterates that the foundation to achieve SDG 16 is the effective implementation for public and private entities to holistically comply with the family of standards ISO 9000 which are concerned with the Quality management Systems, the family of ISO 14000 concerned with Environmental Management Systems, the family of ISO 31000 concerned with the Risks Management Systems, the family of ISO 37000 concerned with the Governance of Organisations and the family of ISO 45000 concerned with the Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems in order to achieve the desired equity, diversity and inclusiveness in the world.
Looking ahead, 2023 will bring increased momentum through WFEO CAC thematic Anti-Corruption Publications (webinars, newsletters, magazines) and culminating it with IACD 2023, we will be reflecting on a world made better by the collective push afforded by the Convention that crucially exposes gaps and ensure this will remain a truly strong mechanism for the years ahead. In addition, a number of activities in different formats online and off line will be organized and all stakeholders are welcome to join us in these activities as will be announced on the WFEO website http://www.wfeo.org and social media.
In conclusion, it’s evident that tackling corruption is the right and obligation of everyone and can only succeed by combined collaborative efforts that require the involvement of each and every person and institutions in order to overcome its negative impacts. Public and private sector actors, civil society, academia and youth alike all have a role to play in uniting the world against corruption.
Thank you,
Eng. KAZAWADI Papias Dedeki
Chairman, WFEO and FAEO Committee on Anti Corruption (CAC)
DEC
2022