Daria Kaleniuk is a celebrated activist and lawyer, a co-founder and the executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center. As an expert in international legal mechanisms for anti-corruption actions, particularly in stolen assets recovery and anti-money laundering initiatives, she fights corruption in Ukraine and helps to develop civil society. Kaleniuk holds a master’s degree in financial services law from Chicago-Kent College of Law. She was a Fullbright program student in 2010-2011. Given her work and achievements, it's no surprise that Daria was recently ranked 37th on Focus`s annual "100 most influential women of Ukraine".
In 2011, Daria joined Pact Ukraine`s team, spending a year as an advocacy manager at UNITER project. In this interview, dedicated to the 50th anniversary of Pact International, Daria shared her experience of work and cooperation with the organization and some interesting insights on the development of the civil society in Ukraine.
When did you realize that you want to be an activist and develop civil society in Ukraine?
Initially, I`ve been involved in the youth movement when I was a student in Kharkiv. We did plenty of different projects such as organization of holidays in orphanages or European integration projects for youth from small towns in eastern regions of Ukraine. But no matter what projects I did, we always faced the same key problem - corruption. So when I received an opportunity to become a Fulbright student in the United States, I decided to focus on learning how to apply international legal instruments to combat corruption in developing countries. During that time, I developed some ideas of what could be done for Ukraine.
When I returned to Ukraine, I joined the Pact team as an advocacy project manager. During my time in Pact, I became more familiar with the Ukrainian civic sector, and soon established Anti-Corruption Action Center (AntAC) together with Vitaliy Shabunin. Initially, the Center existed purely on a volunteer basis in our spare time. Later, we received grant support, so I decided to leave Pact and focus on systematic anti-corruption activities.
How do you remember your time at Pact?
First thing that comes to my mind, is the huge support that Pact provided to many diverse organizations and the desire to support non-standard innovative ideas. Some organizations needed to be institutionalized, including anti-corruption ones. My role as an advocacy manager was to help strengthen these organizations. I believe that we helped them to get on their feet and develop into strong civil society leaders. Considering all these, it is safe to say that Pact`s mission is not just about supporting projects, it is about supporting organizations to become institutionally stronger.
At some point, I felt that I could be more useful to my country if I kept developing ideas and initiatives within the newly created Anti-Corruption Action Center. My Pact experience of work with international technical assistance projects allowed me to better understand the logic of these projects - what are their strengths and weaknesses, how this assistance can be used more actively.
What distinguishes Pact from other donors and international organizations?
Flexibility. We at AntAC value cooperation with Pact for this feature, as well as for Pact`s willingness to always support innovative projects and ideas that no one has supported before. For instance, AntAC focuses on advocacy a lot. This includes activities that sometimes are extremely hard to predict - especially when it comes to the number of round tables, meetings, rallies, etc. And despite this instability, when the political field and environment are constantly changing, Pact has always allowed us to be flexible and use our available financial resources for proper response.
We also appreciate Pact`s contribution to building AntAC`s strong communication and analytical team. Having these "pumped muscles", we always quickly respond to various crisis situations, such as the recent crisis with the decision of the Constitutional Court to cancel anti-corruption reform.
And it is also important to mention Pact`s willingness to invest in innovative ideas and even take certain risks.
What innovative projects of Anti-Corruption Action Center did Pact support?
I can name three excellent examples. Let`s start with a Politically exposed persons (PEPs) database created in 2015 with Pact`s support. Now we are working on making this project self-sustaining and institutionalized. We are also developing a partnership with a commercial organization. We already sell data from this database through our partner to several commercial organizations in Ukraine and abroad. At the same time, the website and the database remain in the public domain.
Another innovative project that no one believed in, but for Pact, was the Democracy in Action International Conference. Initially, we planned to launch the project in April 2020, but due to the introduction of quarantine restrictions, we had to change the time and format of the conference and adapt it to the hybrid format. In fact, we started all the work from scratch. It was a difficult challenge, but Pact kept supporting us, believing in success. And we did manage to succeed from the first time, despite difficult circumstances and quarantine restrictions. This conference is a clear example of how Pact invests in partnerships between different CSOs, and I hope that the further development of the conference will help strengthen such partnerships and synergy.
Pact supported our recent working visit to the United States. Although it took place under very difficult circumstances caused by quarantine restrictions, the visit was timely. We met with many American politicians, decision-makers, and representatives of think tanks. During these meetings, we received a chance to get the picture from the DC perspective - to hear how Ukraine is perceived, what are its prospects, how is the policy towards Russia formed. And what is also important – we invited many of those with whom we connected to attend the conference, if not physically, then online.
Another innovative product that Pact has invested in is the taxpayer movement. We are still testing this tool, but in total our campaign has reached millions of users, explaining them how to calculate their taxes, and raising their awareness of being a taxpayer.
How do you see Pact's activities in the future
The Ukrainian Pact branch can set many standards and approaches for the work of Pact international. For example, successful cases of partnerships between the Ukrainian civic society and Pact can be studied and then implemented in countries with similar conditions and social environments. Thus, the Democracy in Action conference aims to promote Ukraine as a solution to global challenges. We can share a lot of success and experience with the world, as there is a huge demand for it. Therefore, I hope that Pact international will take advantage of this request and our desire to promote Ukraine as a source of solutions.
Speaking of Pact's activities in Ukraine, I hope that Pact will continue to invest in innovative ideas and institutional projects. Institutional support is the best assistance for organizations working in conditions of constant uncertainty. With the right approaches, such support helps to build strong teams. Pact has great potential and perspective to push interaction and expand cooperation between these teams not only within one sector, but even beyond. Our experience shows that cooperation between strong teams and the investment of time and resources in their development are particularly needed in Ukraine. The Ukrainian civic sector is strong, but fragmented, and if we learn more about each other, communicate with each other, help each other, we will be able to strengthen together.