On 16-19 September, 2024, the OECD Anti-Corruption Network for Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ACN) plenary meeting was held at OECD headquarters in Paris, France. The plenary meeting consisted of bilateral consultations of ACN country monitoring teams and national delegations on draft 5th round country monitoring reports, plenary sessions to discuss the draft reports, overview of planned and implemented activities under the ACN workplan, and inter alia presentation of the AC activities of donors and parties in ACN countries. Representatives of Regional Dialogue (Quentin Reed and/or Jamshid Aramov) took part in all sessions.
On the first day roundtable sessions were held between the OECD monitoring teams and country representatives to discuss the draft reports and resolve differences where possible prior to the less active plenary sessions. The Uzbek representatives raised reservations about the methodology and a number of findings. A common point of difference concerned the coverage of regulation in key areas of AC policy: the draft report was negative in this respect due to the failure of Uzbekistan to pass key pieces of legislation (notably asset declarations and whistleblowing), while the Uzbek side claimed that sub-legal acts in fact fill several of the cited gaps. With minor changes agreement was reached on the content of the draft report in the plenary session.
In the final session Jamshid Aramov presented Regional Dialogue’s activities supporting Anti-Corruption reforms and policies in Uzbekistan in the final Tour de Table session. The key points of the presentation were as follows:
In the area of fighting corruption Regional Dialogue’s assistance has been focused on
- Assistance in the process of developing the AC legal framework, in particular laws or draft laws on the Anti-corruption Agency, Conflict of Interest, Asset Declarations, Whistleblowing and reform of the criminal procedure and penal code.
- Supporting and an implementing Anti-corruption education and training at the Law Enforcement Academy, which is a central and – in our experience – central research and training institution on AC in UZ, and Tashkent State University of Law
- Assistance to Yuksalish, the largest civil society organization active in anti-corruption efforts, to conduct studies (primarily corruption risk assessments) in several selected areas: admissions to primary schools, public-private partnerships to establish pre-schools, grading in higher education institutions, healthcare, specifically the provision of obstetrics care, allocation of mortgage subsidies.
Regional Dialogue is currently providing assistance to two institutions in conducting corruption risk assessments:
- Law Enforcement Academy - conducting a corruption risk assessment of the process for submission and allocation of construction permits.
- General Prosecutor’s Office - conducting a corruption risk assessment of the Tashkent Prosecution Office.
Regional Dialogue expresses its sincere gratitude to the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) and the European Union for their support in advancing Regional Dialogue’s efforts in this area.
