20 October, Nur-Sultan - Chairman of the Anti-corruption Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Alik Shpekbayev, and UNDP Resident Representative, Yakup Beris, held a meeting to discuss the priorities of cooperation under the new Country Programme for 2021-2025.

‘’UNDP highly values the ongoing partnership and long-term perspective in the cooperation with the Anti-corruption Agency. We very much look forward to continuing our joint work in supporting the implementation of the “Listening state” concept, building effective and transparent institutions, free of corruption, and ensuring meaningful citizens’ participation,’’ stated Yakup Beris, UNDP Resident Representative.

The Agency has achieved considerable results in promoting anti-corruption standards, developing anti-corruption culture and introducing changes to the anti-corruption legislation. Consequently, this allowed Kazakhstan to join the Group of States Against Corruption (GRECO), an organization aiming to improve the capacity of its members in fighting corruption through monitoring their compliance with the Council of Europe anti-corruption standards.

“Nowadays, complex preventive work is of particular importance in addition to the effective criminal legislation. In this context, the transformation of the state apparatus through the prism of integrity, openness, accountability and client-oriented approach plays a key role,” stated Alik Shpekbayev, Chairman of the Anti-corruption Agency.

UNDP and the Agency have been undertaking joint initiatives on anti-corruption monitoring, developing the methodology for external corruption risks assessment (CRA), promoting integrity principles and engaging civil society in the implementation of the Anti-corruption Strategy. Jointly with Transparency International, UNDP and the Anti-corruption Agency are also currently conducting a sociological survey on corruption perception in Kazakhstan, with results coming out by the end of 2020.  Kazakhstan has lately improved its ratings in the global Corruption Prevention Index (CPI).

The two organizations in their meeting have also covered the UNDP’s COVID-19 response, which aims at assisting Kazakhstan to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic as part of the United Nations Country Team’s COVID-19 Recovery and Response Plan. Among others, UNDP supported Kazakhstan in upgrading digital skills of 1000 civil servants at the national and subnational levels. UNDP also provided expert assistance in developing a package of specific proposals and recommendations for digitizing HR business processes in the public sector, including through i-Qqzmet information platform.

UNDP’s support to the national recovery strategy will be further intensified through the new Country Programme, helping Kazakhstan to enhance resilience to future shocks, following the principle of “leaving no one behind”.