Country: Ethiopia
Website: https://picdoeth.org/
Head of the organisation: Demeke DEBABE, Executive Director
Email: email hidden; JavaScript is required
Tel: 251-1-0911406550
Mission and vision
The mission of the organization is to contribute to the national efforts in ensuring lasting peace and security, sustainable economic growth, and shared prosperity and social progress in the country with a view to see economically and socially self-reliant and self-managing communities wherein the poor are transformed into a sustainable better livelihood leading a dignified life.
General description of your work in the prevention of and the fight against corruption
PICDO increasingly played a role for the last five years in promoting an on-going Social Accountability (SA) program in monitoring progress and holding government accountable to integrity, transparency and anti-corruption standards and principles by applying social accountability tools at community level. SA become an attractive approach for improving governance processes, service delivery outcomes and improving resource allocation decisions wherein it has demonstrated how citizens can make their voice heard and effectively engage in making the public sector more responsive and accountable, empowered citizens to discuss issues of corruption, services in terms of availability, access to all, quality, affordability, etc.
Specific description of the CSO work in link with the UNCAC
Until recently the government of Ethiopia has restricted activities of civil society organizations (CSO) not to engage in governance and rights-based activities. Hence, using social accountability tools effort was made by the organization to improve local anti-corruption measures. The recent reform taking place in Ethiopia call for renewed efforts to ensure that the fight against corruption constitutes a key element in the new political and social paradigm. To this end, under the new CSO law the organization is on process to proactively engage in improving the Democratic Governance and Rule of Law and to support the government in the development of new laws and policies, monitor existing strategies, and help set new standards, raise public awareness and reduce tolerance for corruption and also to initiate, advocate and work together as a coalition at the national and regional level to advance the integrity, transparency and anti-corruption agenda within the UNCAC framework.
Specific description of the CSO work in link with the review mechanism of the UNCAC
Ethiopia has ratified the AU Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption and the UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC). To this effect, in Ethiopia the first review cycle of the UNCAC has been carried out in 2015 but the organization had no chance of participating in the review process due to the government’s restriction of national CSOs from such actions at that time. Hence, due to the political change and the new CSO law the organization is interested and committed to actively participate in the 2nd cycle UNCAC Review process and mechanisms while in due course building its organizational capacity to this end thereby actively participating and engaging in democratic governance, rule of law and anti-corruption policies reforms and in the process of building strong and independent institutions at national level. In Ethiopia the current anti-corruption stance has been slow and insufficient. Integrity, transparency and ant-corruption must be prioritized with fast-tracked plans of action that allow sustainable growth and prosperity to be achieved. The country should take measures conducive to the implementation of UN Convention Against Corruption to the extent possible taking into account the negative effects of corruption on society in general, in particular on sustainable development.
If you or someone from your organization has participated in a workshop on UNCAC and its review mechanism organized by UNODC/UNCAC Coalition, please indicate who, when and where
Demeke Debabe has participated in the Multi-Stakeholder Workshop on the UNCAC and its Review Mechanism on 8–11 April 2019, and in the East Africa Civil Society Roundtable on Fast-Tracking UNCAC Implementation on 12 April 2019, both held at UNECA, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.