Reflections from the OHCHR expert meeting
CiFAR is officially 10 years old today! Ten years ago, on the 25 May we completed our registration as a charitable association in Germany and could officially commence operations.
2025 was a year of both uncertainty and progress in the asset recovery field and beyond. Against a backdrop of shifting global priorities, funding challenges, and shrinking civic space, CiFAR delivered strong impact across the global asset recovery landscape.
How can civil society, law enforcement and public oversight bodies collaborate for effective prevention of illicit financial flows and the recovery of stolen assets? This was the topic of discussions we had this week in Nairobi, Kenya.
In early 2026, CiFAR launched a new project - Empowering Civil Society for Transparent and Inclusive Asset Recovery in West Africa. During two planning workshops in the Gambia and in Benin, we went through some of the main asset recovery cases across the continent, explored good practices for civil society engagement and planned activities for the coming months.
The last few years have seen a waning in the previous acceleration in the use of anti-corruption sanctions across all sanctioning jurisdictions, with relatively small changes to sanctions lists – both in terms of additions and removals. Larger changes however took place this year. The UK in April 2025 added 12 new people to its Global Anti-Corruption Sanctions and Switzerland in January 2026 designated 37 Venezuelans under its Foreign Illicit Assets Act.
As global efforts to recover and repatriate the proceeds of corruption intensify, a critical question remains: how are these funds being used? To address this, CiFAR has launched Monitoring Returned Assets: A Toolkit for Civil Society Organisations, a comprehensive resource designed to ensure that recovered wealth truly benefits the public and is managed with the highest standards of integrity.
In December 2025, the UNCAC Conference of States Parties (CoSP) met in Doha to discuss the latest developments in anti-corruption at the global level and to agree new resolutions to advance and detail the provisions of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption.
Efforts to recover and return stolen assets are gaining momentum worldwide—but ensuring that returned assets are used transparently and for the public benefit remains a critical challenge. Civil society organisations are increasingly recognised as key actors in monitoring asset return processes, strengthening accountability, mitigating corruption risks, and building public trust.
As COSP 11 comes to a close in Doha, its clear that the fragmented and challenging international environment is continuing to make it hard for States committed to fighting corruption through accountable, transparent and participatory methods to make meaningful headway.
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