Youths of Nepal Resolved to Get Involved In Anti-graft Movement

by Anita Thapa

As a consolidation of capacity building and advocacy program for institutionalized youth participation in governance and launch of future initiative in advocating accountability and anti-corruption campaigns, Youth Initiative (YI) organized Integrity Conference: towards accountable society on 2 July 2011 in Kathmandu, Nepal.

The objective of the conference was to bring together people from diverse background and plan on collaborative and collective action towards accountability and anti-corruption movement. One of the acmes of the Conference was panel discussion, where experts in different sectors were invited to share their insights on the issue of accountability, good governance, corruption and the collective way forward. The speakers, among others, are Lawmakers, Former Chief Commissioner of Center for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA), Journalists to Right to Information activists.

Around 150 people showed up for the conference, who also shared their ideas about on how to fight corruption and work together. Some shared their ideas of working together with political parties while some highlighted to use ICT as tools. On the same day, Youth Initiative launched the integrity badge and a handbook about the brief information about the governance, its existing structure in Nepal and need of youth participation in governance. Also a t-shirt called “May the corrupt rot” was introduced which got a huge response and a demand to make it access to public.

YI also shared post conference initiatives such as continuation of advocacy program called YAATra (Youth Advocacy for Accountability and Transparency) and volunteer exchange program National Youth Service throughout all the strategic locations of YI. A web portal called www.nepaliyouth.org will be an online platform to have a discourse on solutions of seen problems and also features different good initiatives in fighting corruption.

This year Youth Initiative Award will be entitled as Integrity Award which will be awarded to young people to wish to work in the community against corruption.

The T-shirt "bhrastachari lai kira paros" ("may the corrupt rot") will be one of the tools of anti-corruption campaign. The slogan of the T-shirt has been designed to touch the sentiment of the people because policies, system of punishment doesn’t seem to be that effective when it comes to corruption and now its time that we create disgust as corruption is such an erroneous thing to do. As a next step the T-shirt will be given as a gift to Council of Ministries, Constituent Assembly Members, Actors and Musician as a part of campaign.