New Director for U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre

Boris Divjak started as Director of our U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre in September. He is a macroeconomist, with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Reading, UK and the Karl-Franzens University of Graz, Austria as well as a master’s degree in International Studies from the University of Reading. From 2008, he has held different positions in the World Bank. His area of specialisation is business enabling environment, evaluating impact of business regulation, clarifying cost of enforcement and proposing regulatory simplification including administering implementation. In parallel to his career, as an anti-corruption activist he founded the Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) branch of the non-governmental organisation Transparency International (TI) in 2000, and as of November 2005 was elected into TI's global Board of Directors, where he served two terms until 2011. He has been an Individual Member of Transparency International since 2012.

-What are your ambitions on behalf of U4?
U4 is a well-established excellence centre with a firm track record. As such it requires no special attention and its performance is quite impressive. However, more practitioners from the development community at large need to profit from that great work, so focusing on the outreach will be my priority as part of the team.

-How can U4 contribute to the international anti-corruption community?
We need to make U4 more visible, for the broader community to understand the resources publically available and to use them regularly. The partner agencies should benefit from a wider variety of existing knowledge products the at U4 that we will be tailoring to reach out to different donor levels and cover emerging needs. U4 should be a driver of the donor anti-corruption response.

-How has the field of anti-corruption changed in recent years? What are the implications for U4?
Social media have engaged more people in the anti-corruption struggle and demand for greater transparency than was ever imaginable. The world of no impunity is ever closer to becoming real. U4 will be at the forefront of the debate how to most effectively mobilise the citizens and focus the agenda on the most pressing issues, also helping to shape the future beyond such changes.