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From Austria to Action: YouthLED Board Members Begin Planning Regional Anti-Corruption Consultations

In April 2025, we joined 27 other passionate young anti-corruption leaders in Vienna, Austria, for the YouthLED Integrity Advisory Board Anti-Corruption Workshop, organized by the GRACE Initiative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).  The workshop allowed board members to exchange ideas on anticorruption, build strategy on combating it in our various countries and regions, and deepen our shared mission: to strengthen youth-led integrity board initiatives globally. The workshop was both energizing and inspiring. There’s something powerful about being in a room full of young changemakers from across the globe. Each board member came from different contexts and backgrounds, yet were united by a shared commitment to building anti-corruption efforts. While Accountability Lab’s translocal network has always allowed us to connect across borders and learn from varied experiences, here we got to live that connection in person. What made this even more special is, despite having co-led the youth council at Accountability Lab virtually for months, we were meeting face-to-face for the very first time. We left Vienna not just inspired but charged with a mission: to take the 2023 UNCAC Youth Roadmap off the page and into our communities.   From Global Commitment to Local Action The 2023 UNCAC Roadmap to strengthen the role of non-governmental actors (young people,  academia and civil society) in the fight against corruption, presented at the 10th Conference of the States Parties to the UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC). We laid out a vision to formalize and support youth-led anti-corruption work. But what does implementation look like at the local level? As board members representing Africa and South Asia, we are now actively planning regional youth consultations that will put this roadmap to the test. These consultations are not symbolic. They are strategic efforts to:
  • Engage young people at the grassroots to understand how corruption affects their daily lives;
  • Collect stories, practices, and policy ideas directly from youth across regions;
  • Build evidence for a future white paper that will be presented at the next UNCAC CoSP11 in December 2025.
  What We’re Planning in Our Regions In Africa, we are designing a consultation under the guiding theme “Understanding Corruption at the Grassroots Level Through Youth Lenses: How, Where, and to Whom It Happens.” The consultation aims to explore how young people experience corruption in their specific local, national, and sectoral contexts and how they are responding to it, as well as best anti-corruption practices that can be adopted in the fight against corruption globally. It will gather input from youth across the continent and document not only best practices but also failures, highlighting what hasn’t worked and why. In South Asia, the planning process is similarly underway. Consultations will reflect the unique political and civic realities in the Asian region, amplifying youth-driven approaches to transparency, accountability, and system reform. Likewise, similar consultations are underway in other regions as well.  Why This Matters These regional consultations are also an operationalization of the 2023 UNCAC Youth Roadmap. They offer a model for how young people, when trusted and empowered, can drive forward national and global anti-corruption agendas. Each consultation will contribute to:
  • A regional evidence base of youth experiences and ideas;
  • A global White Paper, synthesizing findings across all YouthLED regions;
  • Policy and advocacy efforts at national and international levels, ensuring youth voices directly inform anti-corruption frameworks.
Most importantly, the findings from these consultations will form part of a comprehensive white paper to be presented at the 11th Conference of the States Parties (CoSP11) to the UNCAC, scheduled for December 2025 in Doha, Qatar. This is a critical opportunity for young people to directly influence global anti-corruption dialogue with grounded, community-sourced insights.   What’s Next Planning is currently in progress, and we are collaborating closely with Accountability Lab teams in our countries, other YouthLED members, and regional stakeholders to ensure meaningful, inclusive, and action-oriented engagements. We invite fellow youth leaders, civil society organizations, and public sector partners across Africa and South Asia to join us in shaping these conversations and in turning consultation into collective action. Being part of this impactful and practical board and the workshop has been a truly enriching experience, a dynamic platform for learning, exchange, and collaboration. Whether it be developing a toolkit as a step-by-step guide for young people in combating corruption, leading YouthLED talks, or channeling our individual passion for positive change through our engagements as a board, the experience has been immense, as we have also had  multiple opportunities to share the approaches, network and efforts we’ve been practicing at Accountability Lab country teams with a global audience, an experience that not only gave visibility to our work but also created space for mutual learning. Perhaps the most lasting takeaway, however, is the reminder of unlikely networks that are putting in their efforts in their own capacity to build a just world.

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