With initial financing from the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), and additional funding from Canada, the A-CIP Programme currently supports more than 20 beneficiary countries in their efforts to combat corruption and promote integrity.
Launched in January 2019, the Anti-Corruption and Integrity Promotion (A-CIP) Programme responds to the recognised high costs of corruption in customs. The Programme aims at improving the business and law enforcement environment for cross-border trade in selected WCO member countries by making changes to the operational and administrative context that restricts corrupt behavior and promotes good governance in Customs services. These changes are guided by and in line with the ten key factors of the WCO Revised Arusha Declaration Concerning Good Governance and Integrity in Customs.
The WCO Revised Arusha Declaration provides Customs administrations with a practical approach for anti-corruption policies as stipulated in the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC). The A-CIP Programme acts as an important delivery mechanism for WCO Members to realize commitments under UNCAC.
The bilateral component of the Programme involves delivery of WCO technical assistance and capacity building to help selected WCO member countries undertaking measures to implement priority areas of the Revised Arusha Declaration. For each administration, a multi-annual action plan is developed along with clear benchmarks and performance measurement criteria.
The Programme also contains a multilateral component to create an enabling environment for WCO Members to implement A-CIP measures by leveraging regional and international initiatives in parallel, and to build WCO instruments and tools.
The Programme design has taken into account lessons learned from previous WCO programmes as well as global experiences and insights into the challenges for technical assistance and capacity building in the fight against corruption. In particular, A-CIP activities leverage collective action, performance measurement and data analysis as implementation principles for achieving results.
Specific attention has also been paid to take into account parallel change activities both in the participating countries as well as globally, in order to ensure that A-CIP delivers results that complement ongoing and deeper reforms. The actions aim to deliver specific outcomes for each participating country over a multi-annual period.
The A-CIP Programme offers a results-based approach to integrity-related capacity building initiatives. It complements other WCO programmes in enforcement and security such as the WCO Container Control Programme (CCP) and trade facilitation such as the WCO Mercator Programme. Its efforts align with the WCO’s Revised Kyoto Convention (RKC) as well as the World Trade Organization’s Trade Facilitation Agreement (WTO TFA) which call for transparency and predictability, promoting integrity and closing opportunities for corruption.
More WCO Members have shown interest in being part of the Programme, and A-CIP is open to inclusion of support from other donors which could enable more WCO Members to benefit from the Programme’s targeted technical assistance and capacity building.
For more details, please contact capacity.building@wcoomd.org