A handful of Global NPO Coalition on FATF members attended this year’s FATF Private Sector Consultative Forum at the UNODC headquarters in Vienna on the 4th and 5th of April. The Coalition convened a side-event with Member States, financial institutions, multilateral organizations and other stakeholders to discuss the continued impact of CFT rules and regulations on nonprofit activities (especially the interface of CFT and International Humanitarian Law in the most difficult contexts around the world). Mutual Evaluation processes in country were discussed, as was the need for the development of a more holistic assessor training on Recommendation 8 and the nonprofit space.

The Coalition participated actively from the floor through the two days, and we were also on a panel on Day 2 (HSC, CSN and ECNL) together with the World Bank and HSBC Bank looking at what next for Recommendation 8 and its implementation (after the recent changes) in terms of effectiveness. The panel tackled the thorny issue of ‘intended consequences’ - so the intentional misuse of the FATF standards to suppress legitimate nonprofit activity; the inequities around greylisting and the harms that often result (a colleague even coined a new acronym ‘GLIP’: greylisting induced panic); and issues around the formulation of ‘risk’, including where the risk-based approach sits and how it is calibrated.

It was a fruitful two days peppered with interesting discussions on a multitude of financial integrity topics (see full agenda here), with lots of time and opportunity to network.