Our mandate on good governance

The OSCE’s activities in the area of good governance are based on several Ministerial and Permanent Council Decisions. The 1999 Charter for European Security was the first OSCE document to explicitly make reference to corruption as a threat to stability and as having a severe impact on security, economic and human issues.

The 2003 Maastricht OSCE Strategy Document for the Economic and Environmental Dimension outlined the Organization’s efforts to promote good public and private sector governance and combat corruption. The Strategy calls upon participating States to ratify and implement existing international anti-corruption instruments and to develop comprehensive long-term anti-corruption strategies. In practice, the Strategy calls for corruption to be tackled through increased transparency and accountability.

This decision encourages OSCE participating States to sign and ratify the United Nations Convention against Corruption and to fully implement it. It also tasks the OSCE, upon the request of participating States, to “provide support in mobilizing technical assistance, including necessary expertise and resources, from relevant competent international organizations, with due regard to their respective mandates, in the ratification or/and the implementation of the United Nations Convention against Corruption.”

The 2012 Dublin Declaration communicates strong and wide political support for a comprehensive approach to securing good governance, and transparency and combating corruption, money laundering and the financing of terrorism in the OSCE region.

The 2014 Basel Ministerial Council decision encourages the participating States to take further steps to prevent corruption, including developing and implementing preventive anti-corruption legislation and policies, helping to prevent conflicts of interest in the public sector, protecting whistleblowers and helping recover stolen assets.