Anti-Corruption

Countering Corruption is essential to fulfilling USAID’s mission of strengthening democratic societies, and advancing a free, just, and peaceful, world. To drive inclusive, sustainable, locally-led development and safeguard our investments, USAID is making preventing and countering corruption a top priority.

Ani (right) collaborates on a story with Hetq Online’s social media marketing specialist. Heqt is a collaborative space that promotes journalism education in Armenia and is supported by USAID/Armenia and U.S. Embassy Yerevan.

Photo by Jessica Benton Cooney, USAID

Corruption undermines national security and the rule of law, stunts development and equitable economic growth, exacerbates the impacts of climate change and other shocks, and saps governments of legitimacy, eroding faith in democracy itself. It diverts resources that are needed to lift people out of poverty, improve health outcomes, and ensure that children have access to a quality education. While systemic corruption remains a pervasive challenge within countries, it has also become a transnational threat that causes severe harm to communities and democratic institutions around the world. That is why USAID has placed countering corruption - at the local, national, and international levels - at the top of our development agenda.

To address corruption with the urgency and resolve that it requires, USAID has been taking concrete actions to elevate, integrate, and strengthen anti-corruption across the Agency, and to improve coordination with our partners across the U.S. government and the development community. This includes:

• Bolstering anti-corruption efforts: USAID is expanding its anti-corruption programs, including the signature initiatives launched at the Summit for Democracy.
• Accelerating innovation and adaptation: USAID is increasing its focus on innovative, responsive, and flexible programming, as well as addressing the increasingly transnational nature of corruption.
• Embedding anti-corruption across USAID: USAID is institutionalizing anti-corruption throughout our internal operations, and integrating anti-corruption across key sectors, including health, humanitarian assistance, and climate change.
• Countering corruption across sectors: USAID is boosting work aimed at countering anti-corruption across key sectors, including health, humanitarian assistance, and climate change, both to secure sectoral outcomes and tackle corruption from multiple angles.
• Building partnerships and coalitions: USAID is fostering new partnerships -- including with businesses, technologists, researchers, and other donors -- in our effort to transform the fight against corruption.
• Prioritizing localization: USAID is deepening support to local actors, whose leadership is essential to anti-corruption progress.
• Strengthening safeguards: USAID is enhancing our already-robust anti-corruption safeguards to ensure our assistance is neither diverted nor inadvertently feeds into corruption dynamics.

Learn More

• Through the Anti-Corruption Task Force (ACTF), USAID is robustly supporting implementation of the President’s National Security Study Memorandum, and the subsequent U.S. Strategy on Countering Corruption, including by expanding and accelerating our efforts to build local capacity to prevent, detect,and  mitigate corruption and hold corrupt actors accountable; strengthening oversight, accountability, and justice sector institutions; supporting open government and transparency norms; and empowering civil society and media reformers to uncover corruption and engage in collective advocacy. Our first-ever Anti-Corruption Policy captures this new direction.

• The transnational nature of corruption requires a global response. USAID has initiated a bold suite of programs that address the localized drivers, enablers, and manifestations of corruption. Announced at the first Summit for Democracy, as part of the Presidential Initiative for Democratic Renewal, these programs include: 

  • The Empowering Anti-Corruption Change Agents Program, which will boost the work of anti-corruption change agents around the world and empower them with the tools, alliances, networks, and coalitions needed to strengthen their reform campaigns, advocate for and demand change, operate in safety, and engage in collective and collaborative actions that drive real impact. This program will also provide support for Reporters Mutual - an insurance liability coverage for defamation defense assistance to journalists and reformers.;

  • The Countering Transnational Corruption Grand Challenge, which will crowdsource, fund, and scale forward-thinking solutions from partners across the globe to identify, expose, and disrupt transnational corruption; and

  • The Global Accountability Program, which will enhance country systems and capacity to prevent, detect, investigate and disrupt transnational corruption, grand corruption, and kleptocracy- including as it manifests across regions and high-risk sectors – and to build resilience to corruption.

  • The Anti-Corruption Response Fund, which will provide timely, agile support to countries experiencing a window of opportunity or backsliding and respond to other pressing needs/opportunities in the global fight against corruption.

• USAID is enhancing support to critical multi-stakeholder initiatives that focus on transparency, open government, and accountability, including the Open Government Partnership (OGP) and the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).
• As referenced in Administrator Power’s June 7, 2022 speech, USAID recently launched a new dekleptification guide—a handbook to help partner countries that aim to dismantle kleptocratic structures in transition periods when political will for reform is very high. To learn more visit here.
• USAID also launched the Guide to Countering Corruption Across Sectors—-practical, practitioner-oriented guidance for USAID staff, implementers, and the broader anti-corruption community on identifying and capitalizing on opportunities to address corruption through sectoral approaches. To learn more visit here.

Resources

• Anticorruption Assessment Handbook, February 2009
• To view anti-corruption tools, visit our resource page.

News and Information

• ADMINISTRATOR SAMANTHA POWER REMARKS WITH MOLDOVAN PRIME MINISTER NATALIA GAVRILITA, November 17, 2021
• STATEMENT OF SHANNON N. GREEN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE ANTI-CORRUPTION TASK FORCE AND SENIOR ADVISOR TO THE ADMINISTRATOR, BEFORE THE SENATE CAUCUS ON INTERNATIONAL NARCOTICS CONTROL, November 17, 2021
• ADMINISTRATOR SAMANTHA POWER ON A NEW VISION FOR GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT, November 4, 2021
• ADMINISTRATOR SAMANTHA POWER’S REMARKS AT THE U.S.-DOMINICAN REPUBLIC HIGH-LEVEL DIALOGUE ON INSTITUTIONAL REFORM, October 7, 2021
• USAID ADMINISTRATOR SAMANTHA POWER HOSTS ROUNDTABLE WITH ANTI-CORRUPTION CHANGE AGENTS, September 23, 2021
• ADMINISTRATOR SAMANTHA POWER AT THE USAID DEMOCRACY, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND GOVERNANCE CONFERENCE, June 21, 2021
• USAID ADMINISTRATOR SAMANTHA POWER’S REMARKS AT CENTRAL AMERICAN UNIVERSITY, June 14, 2021
• USAID ADMINISTRATOR SAMANTHA POWER’S REMARKS AT THE DEMOCRACY IN ACTION: ZERO CORRUPTION CONFERENCE, June 7, 2021
• STATEMENT BY ADMINISTRATOR SAMANTHA POWER ON ANTI-CORRUPTION, June 4, 2021

Connect With Us

For more information on USAID’s anti-corruption work, please contact the Anti-Corruption Task Force at actf@usaid.gov