Ukraine will host a three-day anti-corruption conference in Kyiv which includes an excursion to the abandoned city of Chornobyl on April 25-27, organizers have announced.
The Zero Corruption Conference organizers include civil society activists and former lawmakers. The event will include a day-long visit to the Chornobyl area, 134 kilometers north of the capital, where corruption, neglect, and mismanagement had been partly blamed for April 26, 1986, explosion that displaced some 170,000 people after a massive radioactive fallout that is still being assessed today.
The BBC cited Kate Brown, a science historian at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a July 26, 2019, story in estimating that 31 people died as an immediate result of Chernobyl In 2005, the United Nations predicted a further 4,000 might eventually die as a result of the radiation exposure. But an exact death toll may never be known.
Confirmed keynote speakers at the Kyiv part of the conference already include Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk. They will be joined by multiple high-profile lawmakers, civil society experts and diplomats who have also confirmed they will take part in various panel discussions throughout the three-day event.
The conference organizers said they aim to bring together “agents of change from civil society, media, government, law enforcement and judiciary agencies, as well as broader international anti-corruption community.”
On April 26, all participants will visit the city of Chornobyl and participate in the discussion “Has the World Learned from Chornobyl?”
The next day, attendees will join discussions with “heads of state, decision-makers and change-makers from Ukraine and overseas.”
The goal of the conference, according to organizers, is to shape an agenda for a future with zero corruption and to provide a venue for high-profile international discussions on issues of corruption and money laundering, their intersection with global security, the environment and public health challenges.
“We believe that Ukraine is a perfect host for this important discussion: it is a live laboratory testing new approaches to anti-corruption, currently rebooting its criminal justice system, fighting an open and hybrid war with Russia, and strengthening cooperation between civil society and state actors from the ground up,” said former lawmaker Hanna Hopko, chair of the conference, in an email to the Kyiv Post.
Organizers have said that a call for applications to attend is open until Jan. 10 and that selected applicants will receive an official invitation to attend before Feb. 10.
The Zero Corruption Conference is supported by the Prague Civil Society Center and grants are available to cover some travel expenses and accommodation costs in Kyiv, but only for participants from Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
