Side Event: Anti-Corruption Initiative for Asia and the Pacific (ACI) Workshop: Strengthening whistleblower protection in the public and private sector
Under the joint ACI Secretariat (led by the Asian Development Bank and OECD), this regional peer-learning platform aims at fostering dialogue among selected economies in Asia and the Pacific.
Based on the 2017 OECD Recommendation on Public Integrity and the 2021 OECD Anti-Bribery Recommendation, the discussion will focus on legal frameworks and existing institutional arrangements for whistleblower protection in the public and private sector.
Employees can often be the first to witness or identify wrongdoing in an organisation but may fear personal and professional reprisals if they make a report. Individuals must have confidence in the reporting system and trust that they will be protected for exposing wrongdoing. Similarly, creating an open organisational culture is essential to promote open and honest dialogue, enabling employees to raise questions or integrity concerns before matters become too serious. Whistleblower protection mechanisms are therefore essential to foster trust, support confidentiality and ensure strong protections against retaliation.
The sessions are designed to facilitate peer-to-peer interventions from participants in the public and private sectors. The aim is for participants to learn from common challenges and experiences in developing and implementing a whistleblower protection framework with a focus on encouraging reporting, protecting whistleblowers and strengthening trust in reporting channels and systems.
9:10-9:30 Opening remarks9:30-10:45 Session 1. Enabling an environment for reporting corruption: openness, raising awareness and incentives
Creating an enabling environment for reporting corruption is essential for whistleblowing mechanisms to be effective. This session will explore how to foster an open organisational culture, raise awareness of reporting channels and whistleblower protection guarantees, and consider the role of incentives in encouraging reporting.
10:45-11.00 Coffee break11.00-12.15 Session 2. Whistleblower protection safeguards in the public and private sectors
Protecting whistleblowers promotes a culture of accountability and integrity in both public and private institutions, and encourages the reporting of corruption. This session will examine key whistleblower protection safeguards across the public and private sectors, including broad definitions of protected persons, retaliation, the reversal of the burden of proof, and remedies to address the consequences of retaliatory actions.
12:15-12.30 Closing remarks
