The Role of the National Anti-Corruption Commission in Promoting a Culture of Integrity through Education

Organized by: UNDP-ACIAC and UNDP Lebanon Country Office

A culture of integrity is essential for advancing the public good and ensuring the legitimacy and trust in public organizations. Strengthening integrity requires developing personal ethics, organizational culture, and management systems. All of these are critical to efforts to combat corruption, through different means and with the participation of different entities and actors in a process involving the whole of society. An essential part of this is anti-corruption education and promotion of integrity among all members of society.
To this end, and in line with Article 7 of the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC), the National Anti-Corruption Commisssion (NACC) is mandated by Law No. 175 of 2020 on Combatting Corruption in the Public Sector to support anti-corruption education efforts and promote integrity, especially through educational institutions, universities, media and civil society organizations. This contributes to the achievement of the objectives of the National Anti-Corruption Strategy (2020-2025) and the NACC Action Plan (2023-2024) to strengthen transparency, activate accountability and end impunity, as well as achievement of Agenda 2030, especially SDG 16 to build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.
The teaching of integrity and anti-corruption are essential to promoting key values among young people. By teaching about public integrity we give students the knowledge, skills and behaviours to fight corrupt practices and establish new behavioural norms and values for society. Anti-corruption and integrity education engages students in schools and universities across different faculties and disciplines in an ongoing dialogue and exploration about their roles and responsibilities as students, professionals and members of society in preventing corruption. Through the curriculum as well as extracurricular activities, it promotes ethical behaviour by equipping students with specific knowledge and skills to resist corruption. This encourages lifelong integrity values, helping them to uphold their integrity roles and responsibilities.
In this context, the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) and the Anti-Corruption for Trust in Lebanon (ACT) Project, implemented with the support of the European Union and the Government of the Kingdom of Denmark, are organizing a workshop titled The Role of the National Anti-Corruption Commission in Promoting a Culture of Integrity through Education, on 30 August 2023 in Beirut, Lebanon, in coordination with the Regional Project on Anti-Corruption and Integrity in the Arab Countries (ACIAC), implemented in partnership with the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA).
With the aim of informing and developing NACC’s future actions to educate and raise awareness on anti-corruption and integrity in general and especially among university students, the meeting will bring together NACC senior management as well as anti-corruption and education officials and educators to engage in discussions and make recommendations. Participants will engage in sharing experiences, entry points and specific approaches and methods for engaging university students in anti-corruption in their academic work and future careers.
NACC will draw on the conclusions of this meeting to develop its anti-corruption education activities in partnership with university officials, educators, and relevant organizations working with university students.