Development partnerships
Development partnerships – We remain firmly committed to strengthening the international architecture for tackling corruption and illicit finance. We will also support partner countries to improve transparency and better fight corruption and organised crime.
Completion Status:
*commitment is not specific or/and not measurable
Commitment filtering:
This commitment is not specific enough. While it does focus on the thematic area of illicit finance, it uses words that are too generic, such as “strengthening”, which is not descriptive enough of the actions that will be taken to achieve the pledge. In fact, the commitment does not identify a particular mechanism or element of the international architecture that should be strengthened. Overall, the commitment is very broad, which makes it challenging to monitor progress.
Points 6.1 to 9.11 of the UK Anti-Corruption Strategy could relate to this commitment.[1] These can be divided into two sub-thematic areas:
Reducing levels of corruption in partner countries by sharing UK expertise through the International Centre for Excellence. This initiative is not yet public but it is funded from the UK Aid package to “stop dirty money in its tracks”[2] and recover millions of pounds from corruption and return them to developing countries.
Collaboration with other countries to counter corruption and illicit finance through a variety of forums, such as the G7, G20, OGP, Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, the Common Reporting Standard, FATF, Global Forum, Global Forum’s Africa Initiative, Open Ownership Register and other initiatives to strengthen beneficial ownership transparency and open contracting.
This commitment could be narrowed and made somewhat more measurable with additional information from the UK government. At present, however, the number of potential initiatives and thematic areas are too large, which makes it difficult not only to monitor progress but to decide what impact and success look like.
[1] HM Government, UK National Anti-Corruption Strategy, 2017, pp. 59 to 69p
[2] HM Government, New UK Aid Package Will “Stop Dirty Money in Its Tracks” and Recover Millions of Pounds for Developing Countries, 30 August 2018,
United Kingdom
