On the 2nd of September 2022 Anti-Corruption Research and Education Centre (ACREC) together with National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) with the financial assistance of the International Renaissance Foundation held a 2nd International Conference “Protection of the Corruption Whistleblowers in Ukraine: Success and Challenges”.
The Conference was organized to discuss modern trends of whistleblowers protection in Ukraine considering wartime. The Conference was divided into 4 panels:
1. Successes and challenges in working with whistleblowers during the year
2. IT systems for working with whistleblowers
3. The role of anticorruption officers in whistleblowers’ protection
4. Whistleblowing in the context of changes:war and European integration
The 1st Panel brought together speakers from the country’s key anti-corruption authorities: NABU, SAPO, NACP and HACC, as well as representatives of the CSOs. They discussed successes and challenges in whistleblowers protection sector that arose in the year since the last conference. The key point of the panel was that Ukraine has good legislation and experience in the context of today’s realities. In order to improve legislation and its enforcement further close cooperation is needed. Ukraine should not stop at the achieved results.
The 2nd Panel included speakers not only from Ukraine, but also representatives of the international community: specialists from the UNODC and Columbian anti-corruption authorities. They all discussed the importance of implementing IT systems for whistleblowers, shared their experience of implementing of such systems. A convenient digital tool can simplify the report process for whistleblowers.
The 3rd Panel was focused on the authorized persons (compliance officers) and their role in the protection of whistleblowers including in the wartime period. Participants concluded that authorized persons (compliance officers) are the whistleblower’s first line of defense and pointed out the necessity of closer cooperation between whistleblowers and authorized persons.
The 4th Panel was aimed at analyzing the role of whistleblowers in the context of changing. Speakers of the Panel were discussing whistleblowers in a wartime period and how their legal status should be improved within the European integration process. These great events gave impetus to the establishment of the broad definition of “whistleblower” – the legislation should protect not only whistleblowers of corruption but also of other crimes and offenses.
The video recording of the conference is available with the link: https://youtu.be/mnxnRiOBuno