Governance and Gender

Corruption results in burdensome costs, feeds inequality and injustice, and undermines the sustainable development agenda. Korea has faced its own challenges with corruption. However, in recent years, the country has made great strides in its anti-corruption efforts and is thereby well placed to share its expertise with other transitioning countries through this thematic area of SDG Partnerships.

The Governance and Gender area of UNDP Seoul Policy Centre (USPC) encompasses two key topics: transparency and accountability, sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV).

Transparency and Accountability

This SDG Partnership focuses on identifying and sharing effective, tested-and-proven, and practical policy instruments to create institutional changes and political will for preventing corruption and enhancing accountability in the public sector. Linking up with UNDP’s corporate initiatives and USPC’s country-level implementation experience, it helps partners access innovative policy solutions and means for their implementation; and support them internalize and apply those tools for governance reform.

For instance, it facilitates provision of peer-to-peer policy advisory services on anti-corruption performance evaluation of public institutions, and corruption risk assessments.

Sexual and Gender-based Violence

This SDG Partnership focuses on identifying and sharing effective means of enhancing rights-based services to SGBV survivors. For instance, it supports partners on development of an integrated support mechanism for SGBV survivors, along with SGBV-related police capacity building through the development of protocols and training programmes. These two themes can be combined, as building the policy capacity is a critical element of providing survivor-centered support in integrated service centers.

This partnership aims to reduce risks of secondary victimization by service providers, and to build institutional capacities to provide survivor-centered support. The work includes supporting countries affected by conflict in order to address the particularities of the conflict and post-conflict contexts. USPC not only works with state institutions (such as the police) but also with survivors’ groups (e.g. grassroots organizations) for rehabilitation of the survivors as well as putting in place institutional structures for reducing secondary victimization, putting the voices of the survivors at the center. This partnership is strategically linked up with UNDP’s global work on gender and access to justice.

Major achievements

In 2021, USPC implemented the following for the thematic area of Governance and Gender through SDG Partnerships.

• Uzbekistan, Kosovo and Montenegro: National anti-corruption agencies worked with UNDP and the Anti-Corruption & Civil Rights Commission of Korea to finalize their unique country-specific versions of Korea’s corruption prevention policies for implementation within their governance systems.
• Argentina: The provincial government of Cordoba with UNDP benchmarked Korea’s Sunflower Centre model; and designed a new M&E methodology to be used for its integrated service centres for SGBV victims, funded by the Cordoba government.
• Indonesia: The City Government of Jakarta continued to finance their one-stop service centre for SGBV victims, modelled after Korea, even through the COVID-19 pandemic.