Over 190 jurisdictions worldwide abide by 40 Recommendation on anti-money laundering and countering financing of terrorism set and assessed by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). Compliance with the recommendations is periodically evaluated by FATF or one of the FATF-style regional bodies.
This mutual evaluation processes produce ratings that have real consequences, affecting country’s bond ratings, access to financial markets, trade, and investment. In protection of these, many governments have proven willing to compromise human rights and civic freedoms. In addition, little is known about how can NPOs continue to be engaged after the evaluation process is official over and the FATF adopts the country evaluation report. This is important because the government frequently needs to undertake measures to comply with the findings of the evaluation report and show measures it has undertaken to respond to the report findings. It is also at this stage of the process, that countries want to typically lay additional regulation on the NPO sector, and so they inadvertently create restrictive measures. NPOs have a role to engage and mitigate existing or potential restrictions.
Yet the FATF post evaluation (follow up) process is still not fully understood. ECNL and Human Security Collective (HSC) aims to fill this gap and explain how civil society can engage in the FATF processes. The paper puts a specific focus on what happens after the country evaluation is final and the country needs to implement FATF recommendations. The paper is available in English and Hungarian: