The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission (ACRC) of the Republic of Korea and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) have affirmed their mutual interest to and share select anti-corruption experiences and lessons learnt from Korea with developing countries through UNDP's global network.

An MoU to this end was signed on 4 December by ACRC's Vice Chairperson for Anti-Corruption, Ms. Jin-young Kwak, and Mr. Magdy Martínez-Solimán, Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and Assistant Administrator of UNDP, and a ceremony was held on the same day in Seoul to celebrate the MoU.

Participants were Ms. Jin-young Kwak, Ms. Anne Marie Sloth Carlsen, Director of the UNDP Seoul Policy Centre (USPC), and Mr. Patrick Keuleers, Director and Chief of Profession of UNDP Headquarters' Governance and Peacebuilding Team in the Bureau for Policy and Programme Support.

"This MOU affirms the strong and meaningful partnership we have already established with ACRC for the past year under USPC's Development Solutions Partnership on anti-corruption. It provides an institutional framework for deepening the substantive engagement between ACRC and UNDP worldwide," said Ms. Carlsen.

"With this MoU, we want to increase our strategic opportunities to help increase the anti-corruption capacity of developing countries by combining UNDP's policy expertise and country-level presence, with ACRC's anti-corruption technical expertise and innovative tools, such as the Anti-Corruption Initiative Assessment and other exemplary policy initiatives," said Ms. Kwak.

"UNDP sees much potential for fruitful triangular cooperation on anti-corruption in line with the target to substantially reduce corruption and bribery agreed as part of the new Sustainable Development Goals," said Mr. Keuleers.

As one of the first cooperation activities under the MoU, USPC and ACRC have launched a pilot project, to help Vietnam adapt ACRC's Anti-Corruption Initiative Assessment (AIA) tool to its national contexts.

USPC, the UNDP Vietnam Country Office and ACRC will provide support to the Government Inspectorate of Vietnam to implement the AIA. The goal is to help increase the capacity, efficacy, and political will to monitor institutional measures for corruption prevention in the public sector of Vietnam.

The MoU emanates from the Development Solutions Partnerships which is USPC's approach, initiated in 2014, to act as a knowledge broker and facilitator to connect Korea with the wider UNDP network and enhance the Korea-UNDP partnership on strategic development issues, such as anti-corruption.

USPC was established in 2011, tasked with representing UNDP in Korea, working with Korea on international issues, and on sharing Korea's development experiences with other countries.