Tetiana Khutor, member of the delegation of Ukraine, Head of the Institute on legislative Ideas, member of the Civil Council of National Agency on Corruption Prevention
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am very pleased to be here today, to represent my country and the voice of the civil society at the Conference.
It has been seven years since the start of the anti-corruption reform in Ukraine. Reform that could not be possible without strong civil society, that was struggling to turn the situation to better since the corrupt President Yanukovych left the country after the revolution of Dignity in 2013.
Ukraine faced many challenges to get what we have now and proudly share our experience.
The Convention has equipped us with anti-corruption instruments, most of which we have implemented and effectively utilised.
Electronic assets declarations of over 1 million officials were open to the society, electronic procurement system that have already saved over 6 billions dollars for tax payers. Becoming transparent, we established new and effective Anti-corruption agencies, that must ensure responsibility. All that were not possible without hearing the voice and constructive pressure of civil society.
Now we are working on saving what we have.
Legislation with corruption holes in it makes the war against corruption much harder.
So we maintain to develop effective preventive mechanisms.
One of them is anti corruption proofing of legislation and draft legislation. You know that feeling where you see that some LAWMAKERS, in your country, abuse their powers in making RUSH and ILL LAWS just for THE RICH to be RICHER,
and you have NO regulation for LOBBYING to prevent and fight such abuse;
you see the LOCAL officials VIOLATING HUMAN RIGHTS and the RULE OF LAW by making and applying ILL REGULATIONS.
I am SURE that you DO know that feeling.
Since 2015 Ukrainian government together with the civil society united to change the situation and stop it. Civil society together with a parliament and the National agency on corruption prevention started to analysed almost each draft law on corruption risk According to strict and precise methodology.
Six years of our activity resulted in more than 8000 draft laws analyzed, and IN nearly ONE thousand draft laws with corruption-causing factors identified.
But THAT is NOT all. After years of real fighting for corruption-free regulation, we have PROVED to be capable of persuading the parliamentarians to ABANDON their ill-intentioned lawmaking; we have PROVED to CHANGE and make Policies more effective.
We believe that anti-corruption assessment must be a compulsory element for policy making process in every sphere.
Understanding the importance of peer-to-peer support, we are convinced that our good practices can equip practitioners from your countries with efficient anti-corruption tools.
We are here to share our experience and we welcome the member-states to the Convention to learn more about Ukrainiantools. Legislation regulation must be formed with the involvement of the society and for the society.
Thank you!