At the invitation of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the World Customs Organization (WCO) participated in the 9th Meeting of the Open-ended Intergovernmental Working Group on the Prevention of Corruption, held in Vienna, Austria, from 5 – 7 September 2018. 

The platform of the Working Group centers on assisting the State parties to the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) in developing and accumulating knowledge on corruption prevention measures and facilitates the exchange of experiences and information among States Parties.

The Working group’s theme for the 2018 session is the use and effectiveness of asset declaration systems and managing conflict of interests.  Topics debated during the session included: 1) preventing and managing conflict of interest (article 7, paragraph 4 of the UNCAC); and 2) asset and interest disclosure systems (article 8, paragraph 5 of the UNCAC).

The UNODC Secretariat also presented the report on the status of implementation of the Conference of the States Parties to the UNCAC resolutions 7/5 on “Promoting Preventive Measures against Corruption”, and 7/6 on “Follow-up to the Marrakech Declaration on the Prevention of Corruption”.

During the session, the WCO highlighted its Integrity Programme and activities related to promotion of integrity and preventive measures against corruption in customs. The “lifestyle audits”, the implementation of income declaration disclosure and management of conflict of interests were specifically mentioned as issues that are active on the WCO Integrity agenda of the international Customs community. The issues of lifestyle audit mechanisms including asset and interest disclosure systems have been actively discussed by the international Customs community and were specifically included on the agenda of the 15th session of the Integrity Sub-committee in 2016.

For more information on the WCO’s Integrity Programme, you may contact capacity.building@wcoomd.org.